Colorwork – Vickilicious Knits

Planning and planning… and planning some more

VickiFebruary 1, 2024Leave a comment

I have started and drafted dozens of posts over the past few years, trying to think through a strategy to “catch up” with all the knitting projects I’ve been working on and dreaming about… and not gotten around to sharing on here yet. My knitting & crafts Instagram is a much more reliable place for regular posting, but there are details and extended thoughts you just can’t fit in a caption. I really miss the days of RSS feeds and Google Reader so I could see what the people I wanted to follow posted, chronologically and however sporadically, and everyone wasn’t so worried about feeding an algorithm, but alas, the world continues changing with or without me.

So without prelude or any real attempt to catch up (for now) let’s talk about the obsession that occupies a substantial amount of my knitting daydreaming lately: Stretching Leftovers.

Specifically, I have fallen head-over-heels in love with stranded colorwork (I’ll share all these projects here soon). And yes, I know a person could just buy new yarn for each new project, but it is SO much more satisfying to make a pair of socks or mittens entirely out of the leftover yarn from a previous project. They are essentially, as a friend pointed out in a KAL group, free projects, so they also really stretch one’s budget and imagination.

One of the first such projects that sparked this obsession were my Dither Socks (Ravelry*), knit from November–December 2021.

* Unless otherwise stated, all links from here forward go to Ravelry pattern and project pages, which you may not be able to view unless you are logged in.

A pair of gradient-style socks made from leftover yarns — Dither Socks, pattern by General Hogbuffer, knit in Fuchsia, Semolina, and Tranquil (teal) colors of Knit Picks Palette, shown on sock blockers

I love this pattern and the way it makes a gradient from three colors of yarn using the early printer-inspired dithering technique of grayscale patterns to alter shades. It’s clever, and it’s ideally suited to using leftovers, as it’s 1/3 of the typical amount of yarn used per sock. And I am especially pleased that I was able to knit them from leftover yarns from my Fireweeds Socks and Chrysanthemums Mittens, two particularly beloved projects.

Diagram of using yarn leftovers from other projects to make socks — Diagram of how Dither Socks incorporated leftovers from my Fireweeds Socks & Chrysanthemums Mittens

Of course I can’t just stay content with a nice little bonus project and call it a day. No, I have now started pre-meditating a series of projects based on incorporating leftovers, and it’s becoming, well, an obsession.

A pair of colorwork mittens in progress, on needles — Pattern: Angkas Mittens by Therese Lundberg
Yarns: Knit Picks Stroll in Sapphire Heather (darker blue) and Wonderland Heather (lighter blue)

I started this pair of Angkas Mittens in late 2022, and I put them aside when the hand came out too short (I’ve since resolved how to adjust the pattern for my longer fingers, and I really hope to have them done this winter).

I want to use the leftover light blue yarn to form the sky portion of forest-inspired colorwork socks (Metsän Siimeksessä from KnitsByAnni), which will use one of two greens for the larger part of the foot. And then I want to take the rest of that green, plus a contrast color, for one pair of celestial-inspired mittens (Temple of the Forest by Elena Maltseva) and some leftover yellow and the rest of the darker blue for a different pair (Sonne, Mond und Sterne by Simone Urban). Something like this:

Yarn sourcing for three new projects from the leftovers of several others.
Photo of Metsän Siimeksessä © KnitsByAnni
Photo of Sonne, Mond und Sterne © Simone Urban
Photo of Temple of the Forest Mittens © Elena Maltseva

Somehow this level of over-thinking and fastidious planning is calming, soothing, and fun for me, and I love dreaming up new ways to use up every last inch of the yarns I already have. Every time I look at projects made with leftovers, I see the history of other projects that contributed, linking my whole body of knitting into a kind of experiential / memory palette. As with every creative thing I do, I change my mind dozens of times while shuffling and reshuffling these plans, and this is one of the only places in my life where I find my chronic indecision to be fun and not agonizing. Surely I’m not the only one?

But I am not just daydreaming about knitting, rather I am working on new things all the time. I hope to have a big ol’ pile of actual knitting to share soon!

WIP Round-Up, Greens Edition

VickiJuly 26, 2021Leave a comment

As a painter, I love color – all colors – and I am endlessly fascinated by variations in hue, tone, how colors work in combination, and so on. I have my all-time favorites (green, fuchsia-ish magenta, teal) and general preferences in terms of clarity and saturation of colors, but occasionally I think color works a bit like having a song stuck in your head: when your attention is attenuated on a particular color, you seem to see it everywhere, and when your mind wanders, say, while shopping for yarn, you just keep coming back to similar shades.

When I glanced at my knitting basket the other day, I couldn’t help noticing the color story I’d been inadvertently repeating. And it’s not just in knitting: the median shade of these projects keeps showing up in my art, in the clothes I wear, in my graphic design – it’s truly stuck in my head.

Also, this isn’t even all of my current green WIPs (nor all of my WIPs by a country mile), so I will continue with another roundup soon.

Alluvial Deposits Socks

While I generally try to vary (or at least alternate) my sock-knitting colors, I couldn’t resist back-to-back greens for my May-June and June-July projects. This yarn is so special, a one-of-a-kind hand-painted, non-repeatable “Wild Iris” colorway from Miss Babs that almost felt too precious to use. Rich Ensor (Ravelry link)’s elegant, sharply clever pattern Alluvial Deposits makes the most of a really special skein of yarn, and when I began to imagine what this yarn would do in this pattern, it felt positively meant to be.

Vauhtia ja vaarallisia tilanteita – Action! Socks

This color, Knit Picks Stroll in Patina, just spoke to me from the moment I saw it. It is that just-right blue-green seafoamy-but-not-too-pastel shade that I would probably classify as my actual favorite color if I could pin down a simple name for it. These socks were for a Sock Knitters Anonymous challenge working a pattern that started with the same first letter as one’s Ravelry username. I didn’t expect much for a name starting with “V” so you can perhaps imagine my delight when I found this lovely Finnish pattern (the name translates to “Full speed ahead”).

A Baby Sweater and Hat Set

When I wanted to make a gift for my cousin’s soon-to-arrive baby girl, I naturally went to my favorite color again, this time paired with a nice off-white. I’m not sure why I’m a bit superstitious about over-committing to pink or blue for babies, or if this is my incredibly subtle way of subverting the gender binary, but I think babies (and all people, really) tend to look incredible in shades of green. It’s slightly unexpected, but it stands out and encourages individuality and personal expression. We’ll talk a lot more about this project soon.

Sonrae Sweater

Earlier this spring I became truly obsessed with colorwork, and I worked up the nerve to finally cast on for the Sonrae Sweater by Jenn Steingass of knit.love.wool. I had such a great time working my first colorwork yoke, featuring glorious shades of spruce and a sagey-seafoam green.

As you can see in the top photo of this post, I’ve since split the body and arms of the sweater and have moved into swathes of stockinette.

Since I started the draft of this post back in June (eeep), most of these projects are now complete (and gifts given!). I expect to have FO posts with many more details to share soon. And maybe, just maybe, something that isn’t green.

Chrysanthemums

VickiNovember 2, 20171 Comment

Every year around mid-October when I catch the first briskness in the air and realize autumn is properly settling in, I get a hankering to knit like mad. I am super behind on knit-blogging (literally – there are multiple, elaborate sweaters I have finished but haven’t photographed yet!) but I will be working through the catch-up pile soon. Meanwhile, as I finished a pair of socks and had some size 1 needles free, I decided there was no time like the present to have another crack at colorwork…

As I started working on the Chrysanthemums mittens from Knitty, it occurred to me that chrysanthemums are the birth flower for November, so these would make an excellent birthday present to myself (November 1).

In the first pass I made the background of the main section yellow and the chrysanthemums this purplish fuchsia, but it looked drab and I really disliked how much the strands in the back showed through with the tension issues I was having. I also realized that if my intent is to (ultimately) have these mittens go with a Selbu Modern beret as planned, they wouldn’t coordinate well in reversed colors.

Much better.

I ripped back to the cuff but decided to keep the picot trim and wrist section with a yellow background for contrast. I’m much happier with the color combination now and excited to see how these come out!

My first Fair Isle

VickiFebruary 6, 2011Leave a comment

I’ve attempted colorwork haphazardly before, but this is my first real Fair Isle project. As long as I’ve been knitting, the concept of stranded knitting has eluded me, seeming closer to wizardry than a fairly easily learned skill. It turns out there really isn’t any great mystery: you knit with one color, then the other, and you gently float the yarn you’re not using across the back. That’s really it.

Of course, maintaining an even tension that results in neither floppy stitches or excessively tight strands is its own gamut, but so far, I’m cautiously optimistic about my ability to do so.

As this is a beret (specifically Kate Gagnon Osborn’s exquisite Selbu Modern), I have some concerns about it fitting my gigantic Irish head. Looking at the many projects on Ravelry, I was charmed by all the color combinations. It took me a while to come up with these two together, but it really shouldn’t have, as lately I’ve been obsessed with magenta and yellow in everything I do.

Learning Fair Isle opens up a world of possibilities in multi-color knits. I am also utterly delighted by these tiny, lovely little stitches dancing together. This is a very joyful project, which is exactly what I needed in the middle of winter.

A Hat Saga

VickiNovember 11, 20081 Comment

Much like the sock sagas of days gone by, I am not having an easy time coming up with a basic hat for my brother’s birthday.

His request was simple. He sent me a photo of a hat he wanted, and we brainstormed. The original was wool, but he is a fishing boat captain, so I knew this hat would get damp and need to be washed frequently. We picked Cotton-Ease to make it machine washable, and I suggested gray, black and blue. I found a simple hat pattern online and thought I could whip it out in a few days for his birthday on November 3rd.

The first hat did indeed zip along (you must see where we’re going with the “first” thing, right?). I figured out how to strand my knitting to make a diamond pattern that I thought was pretty spiffy.

The trouble was, the band of stranded stitches made this hat tight. Before blocking, it fit snugly on my head, and my brother has a much bigger head, with thick curly hair to boot.

I tried to maintain hope, soaking it and stretching it like crazy while it was wet, then periodically throughout blocking. Because there were so very many ends, I decided I’d have my brother try it on before I finished it completely, and as I feared, it was much too tight. It also seemed too long, so I made mental notes on modifications and resigned myself to knitting a second hat.

At his suggestion, I changed the pattern a bit, though I prefer the first. I moved up a needle size and knit it flat so that I could do proper intarsia, thinking it would all stretch uniformly. I resisted casting on extra stitches, as this pattern was supposed to fit a man’s head and I was sure it was just the stranded bits making it too tight.

With many, many more ends to weave in, I stretched it around my brother’s head before I even sewed it up, and it barely went all the way around. He looked at me grimly and said “Better get going on a third.”

I am still hopeful that once it’s seamed, it can stretch more than it did in that cursory fitting, but I worry that it’s still going to be too small. I don’t think I have enough gray yarn left and because I cut so many pieces for the intarsia bits, I don’t think I can reuse hat #2’s yarn.

Technique-wise, I have no idea what I would do differently besides casting on more stitches. I preferred stranding to intarsia, but I didn’t exactly love either one.

Sigh. Good thing hats go quickly, right?