Design on the brain
Seems like lately my brain is overflowing with new design ideas and it's all I can do to document them before something else distracts me and I forget what I was thinking about . . . what you see above is a new design for colorwork mittens in Koigu (what else!), a project I'm totally in love with at the moment. I'm using semi-solid chocolate brown and a multi pink/purple (P221 if you're curious) and quite loving the effect it's producing. This photo's pretty true-to-life, perhaps a bit too orange, but it definitely gives you a good impression of what these really look like.
The inspiration for these came all-of-a-sudden about a week ago when the weather went from a mild 45 degrees down to 20 degrees in under a day. I wasn't expecting it to be so cold that day and left my apartment wearing completely inappropriate clothing, and spent most of my time outdoors wishing I had brought mittens/gloves with me. And then the image of polka-dot mittens came to my mind completely formed, but they were traditional polka-dots (ie equally-spaced and same-sized). When I started sketching them out I thought that seemed too proper for my aesthetic, so I started messing with the proportion of the dots . . . a few hours of playing with the chart later and I was happy with what I had.
Here's a peek at the chart:
Knitting colorwork always surprises me a bit because it takes time to get your grove back when you first start. I ripped out the first few rows of this mitten because my tension was off and it was buckling very obviously. Now the knitting is nice and smooth (well, for colorwork I mean!) and I'm happy with how it looks. Can't wait to finish these and give them a good soak to get the stitches all pretty and perfect.
Oh and by the way: Stranded Koigu feels amazing. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it!
2 Responses
joan
Love!
I knit a stranded hat out of Koigu, it’s one of my favorites.
Julie
March 03, 2011
oooh, it looks amazing so far!! I love that variegated red yarn.