In all of my books, and in all of my classes, and in all of my class handouts, I stress choosing highly contrasting colors for Fair Isle. In order to make sure that your yarns have enough contrast to make the colorwork worthwhile, I suggest scanning your yarns and then turning the scan into b/w in order to check the contrast. Like so.
See? You can easily tell the difference between the light and dark colors.
And therefore, there were no nasty surprises when the items were knit.
You'd think I'd remember that, given that it's my own advice, right? Advice, I might add, that I was paid to write, and am paid to teach.
You might also think that I would take these yarns, which look highly contrasting to the naked eye, and scan them before casting on, right?
If I had done that, I might have noticed that there was really very little contrast between those colors.
And I would have had plenty of warning
for this...
I should have listened to myself. Sigh.
(and yes, I will take these examples of What Not To Do to all of my classes. It'll be an excellent object lesson).
For my very first Fair Isle project, a sweater with a Fair Isle border for my then 3 year old daughter, I picked out a lovely set of colors. "Those won't do at all," the knitting lady told me, and changed all my selections to horrible brash colors. I was so intimidated by her (she was a real grouch, but had the only knitting store in town,) that I got what she said, and my sweater was beautiful. Had I gone with my original selection, it would have been a big nothing! I still have it 40 years later, as a little relic of early knitting.
ReplyDeleteThat is a brilliant idea about picturing them in black and white.
I've made chosen wrong colors for stranded knitting too. Now I know, when choosing yarns for colorwork consider 3 things: value, value, and value!
ReplyDeleteMy I also suggest keeping those black and white scans in one place so you develop a 'database' of just how much value difference should one look for (or avoid) when seeing the black and white scan.