WIP Wednesday 176: Color Torture

Fantastic Menagerie Tarot

So you know how it is: you finish a project, the kids want to go swimming and you have no other WIPs to take with you to occupy yourself for the afternoon. You have the yarn but not the pattern for the first item in your queue. You have the yarn AND pattern for the second item, but it also involves squillions of beads - definitely an 'at home' project. 

You settle for another pattern in your queue for which you can make do with some stash yarn. When you print it you notice that also needs lots of beads - which you don't have for this one, plus, same objection as above, if you did have them.. 

You then print a pattern from near the end of the queue that you have been saving for special - and then realize that not only has the printer given up the ghost, you have no laceweight wound. You know there is no point even thinking about winding it as the kids are clamoring to get out the door, down the road and into the water already.

What to do in this dilemma ? Is it the end of the world as we know it ?

No, of course not.

We sigh resignedly and unearth our long-term crochet project, the Summer Garden Granny Square Blanket. The feeling of piety and righteousness endowed by plodding on with an old project is in no way at all ever to be even thought about in the same breath as being anywhere even being near the neighborhood of the excitement of starting a Whole New Project.

At last count we had a random 119 squares completed, theoretically all made from leftovers and scraps. (Just for Titch - I mean, they are all definitely absolutely totally made from leftovers and scraps. Oh yes. Uh-huh.)

We have no idea how many squares we need as we have no real plan in mind.

Yes, I know ! Can you believe it was me talking just then ??

Anyway. We consoled ourself with adding to the total while poolside waiting for the kids to become waterlogged.

This was the first arrangement:

Sadly, it did not meet with the somewhat OCD aesthetic standards of either Mini Diva or Uber Cool Brother - who may now be merely 'Cool Brother' as a result. 

They also strongly disapproved of this arrangement:

Their response might be summed up by:   ''Oh. My. Hmm. Yes well. No. Colors ! ALL THE COLORS ! Next to each other ! ALL THE COLORS ! I'm struck blind !''

This time I ignored them, safe in the knowledge that if I thought I was out of my comfort zone with color usage, oooh, say as far as the Moon is from the Earth, then they are out of their color comfort zone as far as Pluto. So, satisfied with having imposed this level of artistic anguish on at least two people, I got greedy for more screaming and decided to impose it on you, too, Dear Readers.

You're welcome. Just enjoy how subtle everything else is going to look in comparison .....you can check out classy things over at Tami's Amis .....

4KCBWDAY4: Imagination

Golden Tarot

                        4KCBWDAY4




What are your favourite colours for knitted or crocheted projects. Have a think about what colours you seem to favour when yarn shopping and crafting.

Only after writing this part of your post should you then actually look to see what colours you have used in your projects. Make a quick tally of what colours you have used in your projects over the past year and compare it to the colours you have written about. Compare this, in turn, to the colours that are most dominant in your yarn stash – do they correlate?

Now think back to your house animal - do the colours you have chosen relate to your animal in anyway - if you are in the house of peacock, for example, are your projects often multicoloured and bright?




Well, that whole Infographic thing from yesterday ? A monster has been unleashed - you may wish to start running now.

The simplest way for me to blog about today's topic was with a graph ! You have no idea how much I'm enjoying this scientific geek approach, it has true novelty value for me. Plus, purty colors.

Color Mix: Theory vs. Reality | Create infographics

I was definitely surprised - my estimate of the percentages of color families of my FOs and stash didn't really have a close connection to reality. I was badly out on the greens, reds, pinks and neutrals in FOs; and in my stash (not all of which  is on Ravelry, so I ignored those ones) I was wrong by miles on nearly every color grouping.

This was an interesting exercise, as it dispels one's own assumptions ....

 Even though I got it so wrong, I don't know that there is any real reflection of my own taste in yarn colors, as most of my projects are for other people and so I choose colors I think they will like, rather than what I like. The 70s Horror Cushion was a great example of that:

  

Having generously shared that pain and suffering with you - there's no need to thank me so effusively - I think we should go soothe ourselves by plugging KCBWDAY4 into Google, to see what everyone else  has said, while listening to this:

 

WIP Wednesday 137: Agony Without Ecstasy

Spiral Tarot

There has been an ongoing trend for retro, kitsch and vintage. Of course, when I say that, both you and I are imagining Laura Ashley, Cath Kidston, stressed white-painted Shaker-style furniture, handsewn quilts and copper-bottomed pans hanging from a wooden rail in our country kitchen next to bundles of home-grown dried herbs.

In actuality, what we are far more likely to get are some horrors from the Decade Without Taste ie. the Seventies. Oh the vileness of the avocado bathroom suite; the stunting of one's color sense and love of random gidgets that resulted from too much time spent trailing after one's parents in Habitat. And there are just no words for the plasticness and the nightmare wallpaper. It is simply amazing that we survived without bleaching our eyeballs, or poking them out: anything to reduce the aesthetic agony. I am permanently scarred. And I don't care how many times bell-bottoms and flares come back round, you will NEVER see me in them unless I have been drugged senseless and forcibly dressed.

So seeing as my DH poisoned me with mushrooms this weekend (the flaw in his plan being that he also ate them and was ill too) and sickness if not the actual mushrooms affecting one's perceptions of reality, I thought I would inflict upon you my own little hommage to the 70s:

I wish I could claim some mitigating irony. But sadly I could find none. Of course, you realize not only the colors but the crochet itself is retro-kitsch ? The only saving grace of these pieces of cushion covers is that they are leaving my house as soon as they are completed. 

Yes, the intended recipient is a relative of mine, why do you ask ?

Now, while I hang my macrame plant holder next to the lava lamp, I am absolutely positive you will find some soothing prettiness over at Tami's Amis ....