After my virtual class on how to design my own color palette for the Shetland Muse hat, I wasted very little time in selecting and ordering yarn. And “by very little” I mean I’d picked them out and ordered within days. The color design sheet I’d made served me in more ways than I anticipated in the yarn selection. While picking out colors, I was drawn to a gorgeous vivid orange color called “tangerine”, but it was a bit too light for my darkest orange shade. I was sorely tempted to switch out the next lighter, and slightly pinker, shade I’d planned for it. But when I subbed it into the design, I could see that it would unbalance the effect I was going for. So I stuck with my original gradient of oranges. I came up with two options in yarns:
The bluer shades matched most closely with the digital palette I created, while the greener ones more closely resembled what I’d created on paper with my watercolor pencils. In the end, I stuck with the blues I’d originally been aiming for. Some of this was straight vanity: turquoise blues look very good on me. As it becomes more a turquoise green it doesn’t look bad, but it’s not as good either.
I was pretty impatient for the yarns to arrive, and in all fairness, delivery was quite quick. I feel like they match the pictures from the yarn stores’ website pretty closely. I was expecting the apricot to be a little bit darker, but such are the vagaries of computer monitors, cameras, and dye lots.
I ordered from UmGarnt.de* instead of directly from Jamieson’s so that I wouldn’t have to deal with customs delays. Shipping was also cheaper. Don’t ask me to hold a conversation in German, but my yarn ordering skills are pretty darned solid.
I started the hat on June 3rd, and after three days, I’d finished the brim of the hat:
Since then, I feel like I’ve been chugging along pretty quickly despite limited crafting time (and a complex stranded colorwork pattern is not a good work call project), and all the sheepses are done! Felix’s labeling of what’s foreground vs background, and her suggestion during the class that if you use the two-handed method for stranded colorwork (one color in the left and one color in the right hand) that the background is the right hand yarn also was extremely helpful**. Even before blocking this, I feel like my work is much cleaner and tidier, with the foreground image clearly visible. It also meant I knew to switch the blues from left hand to right hand just as I finished the sheep as the blues switch at this point from foreground colors to background colors.
I love love love it. The colors are what I’d hoped for, and it’s fun to knit. I’m both eager to finish it to see the completed project, and sad that it’s going so quickly. Also, I think I get bonus points for the yarn matching the project bag so well. The Baul bag from Joji&CO is working out really well for this project, as all my little skeins can nestle in together with one end pointing up, keeping them tidy and making it super simple to switch colors.
*Another skein of Crazy Zauberballe might also have fallen into my cart somehow, a danger I wouldn’t have faced if I’d stuck to the Jamieson website.
**I am admittedly curious about why this works this way. Something about which strand is above vs below on the back of the work perhaps? Something to explore another day.