Wooly Wednesday: Colourwork

As this neverending winter of our discontent shows no signs of letting up, my makeup review backlog is growing exponentially, the piled-up products to be swatched/photographed forming a prodigious ziggurat which periodically gets smited (i.e. when I trip over the damn pile in the dark) in true old testament fashion, but, like, with more glitter....

So in the meantime, some swatches and colour combos of a different kind, assuming anyone made it through that paragraph, ha. Because I am exploring new knitty territory! And it is called colourwork (and lo, there was much prostration and keening throughout the land my brain).

My primary tour guide is Melissa Leapman's Mastering Color Knitting, clarity of thought and photos making up for its lack of hi-larious '70s styling [for which check out Sarah Don's Fair Isle Knitting. Seriously. :D]

She lucidly skims through colour theory,

shares a few dozen fairisle motifs,

and includes separate chapters on, for example, double knitting

and intarsia

each with its own potted histories, how-to diagrams, design notes/possibilities and example patterns, though this isn't primarily a pattern book -- none of the ready-written patterns appeal to me at all as things to wear/make and yet I found them very helpful just to read through to see Leapman's design process.

What I enjoyed most is the lack of pre- or proscription in this book which makes many of the most revered knitting gurus out there unbearably grating to me. Leapman isn't totally "anything goes, man, go forth and tie knots in the breeeeeeze" but she gives you 'the rules' in a hedged-by-quotation-marks way which actively encourages knowing deviations, and, well, play.

Unfortunately I am on a yarn diet (with occasional falls off the wagon to be sure), which means stash-diving to come up with colour combos for projected projects. So far:

I know, grey would've been awesome. But these make a nice, totally organic-sustainable-undyed-British-how-green-am-I?, matched pair.

Okay, you know how diets should incorporate a little of what you fancy? I have been stalking a particular pattern for so long that the yarn it calls for has just been discontinued. ....How could I say no to 50% off a no-brainer dream boatneck in suitably sitcommy-clashy colours?  Oops.

Back on the wagon: this one is entirely composed of stash yarn and leftovers from other projects. I just hope my maths works out because most of these have also been discontinued.... it may yet turn out to be a vest if I run out of something (grey, most likely) mid-sleeve.

Now with even moar virtue: I've already started swatching for this one, so it may actually happen and stuff :D

By Kate Davies. For yarniacs, that should be 'nuff said, I think?

The hot fuchsberry shade on the right here [which the lovely Anne JF informs me is called Mexican Pink] is a leftover ball of Jamieson&Smith's delicious range of pure Shetland 2 ply jumper weight wool, i.e. the yarn to fairisle in, which also comes in:

Their full range is more exciting to me than any eyeshadow display: