Finally some knitting on my blog!
This is my swatch for Bute - the lovely cardigan from Rowan magazine 52.
I have completely changed the colour scheme - more on which in a second - but this swatch is all the Bute I am going to knit right now. It will be my reward knit for meeting all the deadlines I have looming over my head. Carrot time!
What deadlines?
As you may know I am doing the Old Maiden Aunt Autumn yarn club. I am currently knitting the last sample, then the patterns go out to be tech-edited and I'll be doing a photo shoot mid-September. I am busy also doing work for a well-known UK knitting magazine which has a tight deadline. I am caught in a perfect storm of fun patten writing and sample knitting. I wouldn't want it any other way.
I am just pleased that all the last months' hard work will slowly be trickling its way out to the general public, so you don't all think I am been a complete slacker. As I keep saying: "I am still knitting - honestly!" and now I'll be able to prove it!
(And I know people are going to be asking about the Doggerland collection. I am also working on the second sample for that right now, so expect something to happen relatively soon - of course 'relatively soon' now means something completely different in my vocabulary than in yours, but Doggerland is very much a part of all this hard work. In fact, I just solved a rather nagging design problem the other day).
Bute will be my reward for all this hard work. It is going to be a real treat to sit down with somebody else's pattern and just relax into the knitting rather than always constantly think which is what I am doing when I knit my own samples and swatches.
So, yes, I changed the colours of Bute and I am going to tweak them a tiny bit more. Here is how I went about changing the colourscheme.
- I took the original colours and arranged them on a table so I could really look at them
- I assigned each colour a value: "the pale base colour" - "the dark base colour" - "the zingy contrast" - "the highlighter" etc.
- Essentially I tried to imagine the given colours in greyscale.
- I also tried to figure out what function they have within the colour scheme.
- Then I decided what I wanted from my colour scheme. The original Bute was very earthy and warm. I wanted a cool tone with hints of frost.
- Then I set about going "this is the pale base tone. It is a warm camel colour. What would be a cool, pale base tone?" and that's when I decided to use the Clay colour as the basis. I was aided a tiny bit by Rowan having done another version of Bute although I eventually deviated hugely from that colour scheme too.
- The hardest bits were using the "highlighter" and "zingy contrast" - for the highlighter, I actually ended up using a cool pink ("Peony") although I am not a pink person. The design just calls for a sharp colour to just add interest here and there - and the pink will bring out the purples and fuchsia undertones in other colour colours. It is all about looking at how the colours relate to each other in the design.
My last tweak will be to swap the teal and the dark purple in the swatch. I was really tired last night when I knitted the swatch and I forgot my original plan. Still, it looks really nice and I cannot wait to get started.
And that, my friend, is just a handful of deadlines away. Off to knit some more. I swear I look forward to unveiling all of these sekrit things.