colour

Mawata Colossus: the Peephole block

| eelliottknits

Being part 3 of a series of tutorials for the Mawata Colossus project. The first part explains how to knit with mawata or silk hankies, and the second gives a recipe for the Picture Window block. Because mawata don’t come in a standard yarn weight and you may have your own preferences for the gauge and size of your blocks, these posts describe how I make the blocks and give guidelines on making your own. They’re more sort of recipes, rather than proper tested, tech edited patterns. Continue reading →

Colour play 2: The Great Shetland Experiment

| eelliottknits

Being stage 2 of ongoing experiments in becoming the boss of colour in spinning.

The Cormo spinning progresses apace, but as I mentioned last time, it’s going to take a while, and I have the attention span of a hummingbird on speed. Enter some English Shetland wool from Into the Whirled: one multicoloured braid

A little out of my comfort zone, but hey, green & purple — what can go wrong?

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Hand me that sheep, Igor

| eelliottknits

If you spin, you’ve seen them: those braids of fibre, hand painted in glorious blobs of colour, with names like Night Carnival, Autumn Leaves, Mille Fiori. Those braids scare the pants off of me. Now, I love colour. I’m a knitter; I design in colourwork; of course I love colour. But for some reason, faced with those riotous braids, I’m stymied. What the hell would I do with them? What if, despite the dyer’s careful application of their art, I spin them up into something ugly? Something that offends the eye and sends children screaming to their mothers? Those colourful braids hold so much potential, and others have made gasp-worthy yarn from them, yet somehow I’m convinced that in my hands, that potential would go horribly wrong.

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