Knitting is fun, isn’t it?!
I am having one of those joyful periods where all of my projects are so exciting that I can barely put them down long enough to eat, let alone to clean the bathroom or go to work!
I cast on for a Kaffe Fassett Stripe Scarves and Cowls from the MDK Field Guide No. 13 Master Class at the start of January, and since I started, I just can’t stop. The photo above was taken on 3rd January and it has grown a LOT in the last week.
This little Field Guide is a joy (spoiler alert – they all are!). It’s packed with ideas for turning basic patterns into celebrations of colour, with mix and match stripe sequences and stranded colourwork charts. I saw Cristina knitting on her Coins Cowl while I was on my Rhinebeck trip, and it lodged firmly in my subconscious that this would be my Christmas knitting treat once term was over.
Once my Parallelogram Wrap and Allday Sweater were off my needles I cast on with abandon!
As you can see, it has been hard to put down…
Kaffe’s mantra that if in doubt you should add more colours is in evidence throughout!
I already had a fair stash of Rowan Felted Tweed from my Nut-Hap and East Woodlands Sweater designs, but everything I had fell into Ann’s great description of blah colours… Definitely go over to MDK and read up on the Juicy and Blah system – it was a confidence building game changer for me!
Since all I had was a muted selection of blah colours, I headed over to Frome Yarn Collective, my lovely local yarn shop, to choose some juicy shades to make my cowl zing.
Kay wrote a great blog post about Cristina’s inspiring Cowl over on MDK and the thing that really lodged in my head was her suggestion of the benefits of having a “Rule”. Oh how that appealed to me. I am a TOTAL rule follower. Well, most of the time anyway…
So here are my “rules” for my Cowl…
For each pair of colours I will work both combinations consecutively. So if I do pink circles on a green background in the first band, then the second band will be green circles on a pink background. This works really well for me as it means fewer ends to weave in as I go.
I have varying quantities of each shade, so as far as possible I will use all available balls in combinations before returning to a colour for its next round. In the photo above you can see all of the colours I am using in the first seven pairings. The bright pink and pale yellow band is the start of my second set of colour pairings. As shades are used up, there will be fewer combinations to make before repeating a colour.
I don’t want to repeat a pair of colours. With 14 shades to start with, this shouldn’t be a problem!
And that’s it.
It’s so much fun! At the start of each new set of colours I pair them all up. As far as possible I’m pairing juicy and blah, but I’m relaxed about it. There’s something very liberating about just rolling with it, and frankly you would have to try very hard to find a combination of Felted Tweed shades that didn’t work well together.
Mason-Dixon Knitting are running a Kaffealong until the end of January, so if you want to join me in some colourful, joy-filled, knitting fun, then grab a copy of Field Guide No. 13 Master Class and cast on!
For interest, here are the colours I’ve used (some of the blahs are discontinued):
Blah colours are Gilt (pale yellow), Avocado (green – I’m classing it blah although it could be either), Pine (dark green), Fern (slightly lighter dark green), Celadon (pale green), Amethyst (pale purple), Maritime (blue) and Jaffa (muted orange).
Juicy colours are Barbara (bright pink), Iris (blue), Turquoise, Zinnia (bright orange), Vaseline Green and Emerald Green.