19 July 2007

Color Swatches

On Monday, I received a colorful package in the mail... literally, full of COLOR! Seven pots of dye, to be exact. I spent the rest of the week dyeing and knitting these basic color swatches.

Each swatch represents one of the dye colors in my inventory. They will give me an idea of my color palette, a representation of the colors I have to work with when matching colors together and combining dyes to make new colors.

Using tiny sample-sized skeins, I dyed one skein in a high-concentrate dye solution, resulting in a rich pure color. Another skein was dyed in a low-concentrate dye solution, resulting in a lighter color and heathered effect where the dye didn't reach every wool fiber. I repeated this process for every color in my dye box. Then I made a series of mitered squares, one for each color, using the darker yarn for the first half and the lighter yarn for the second half.

I loved the process, start to finish - dyeing the yarn, knitting the mitered squares, playing with the color swatches and rearranging them into photographic compilations - all incredibly fun!

Isn't this Moroccan plate lovely? (Thanks, Dick!)

2 comments:

Bev Love said...

The plate is beautiful. The color swatches are very pretty. Maybe they can be jar cozys for your canned yarns. It was good to hear your podcast, thanks for that.

Suzanne said...

What a great idea for dying swatches. What dye did you order? I've tried dying a couople of times and loved it. Next is some self-striping sock yarn, but I don't know exactly when...