I've been messing around with colour work lately. Over the holidays I was given 2 awesome books. The Essential Guide To Color Knitting Techniques by Margaret Radcliffe and Mastering Color Knitting by Melissa Leapman. :D They're both very informative and if you're going to dive into colourwork I highly suggest picking them up.
Truth be told I'm not the best at stranding. I've made attempts in the past, but it's ended up in disaster. :roll: I thought armed with my new books I'd make another attempt. I guess my problem is that I would rather create my own patterns than follow them, so in the process I make things more difficult for myself. It's also been some time since I've knitted. Usually I'm crocheting as I find it much more portable and easier to backtrack if I do make mistakes. :P
I'm not gonna gloss over things. I am terrible at judging how much yarn I need when I'm casting on. It hadn't occurred to me until I read about it to cast on with 2 colours, so one is the main and the other the long strand. I'll probably use this method even when I'm not doing colourwork to save myself some headaches and wasted yarn. :wink:
I love the way the Latvian braid looks. I had always thought it was so complicated, but it's really super simple. Basically it's decorative stranding. You're purling on the right side, but twisting the colours in one direction as you go. So, one row would go to the left and the next to the right. Then you're left with a chevron pattern. I did both a half and full braid on my sampler. The half one is shown in the picture. I think it looks better with this yarn (Bernat Satin) because the full is too clunky. It reminds me of a candy cane. :)
My first sampler was a simple Mario 1up mushroom design. Nothing too fancy. I tried some patterns below, but as you can see I flubbed those up. XD My mom saw it and thought they were little houses. :P But overall I'm happy with how it turned out. I thought I'd get a bit more ambitious and try a 4 colour sampler. It didn't go as I had planned...
The purple and white ribbing turned out nice, but that's about it lol. I was trying to go for an old school Final Fantasy theme. Trying. The big pattern after the ribbing is a tile pattern I modified from a carpet in Baron castle. I thought it wouldn't be so bad, but I had some problems stranding the white. There was supposed to be red, but halfway through I decided I would duplicate stitch it in later. Obviously that didn't happen. When I got to the top portion where the main characters would be I could see that things were starting to pucker up and the floats behind were too short. I decided to give up on the pattern and just finish the background. Again, I thought I would duplicate stitch the scene in later.
It's hard to tell, but it says Flumpkins :P This section didn't turn out so bad, which makes me think there is still some hope. I really think this is a case where less is more. I'll have to go back to the drawing board (literally) and rethink the pattern. I've still got some ideas I want to try, so we'll see!
But I didn't come out of all this empty handed. My mom commissioned me make her a case for her cell phone with a starman on it. I redid the first Mario sampler pattern and I think it turned out pretty awesome. :D The floats make it extra cushion-y and since she's got a touch screen phone it helps to wipe all those annoying fingerprints off. ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment