Color Affection by kikilemarteau
After unravelling this pattern twice already, I have finally completed my Color Affection. I really really liked my friend’s Colour Affection, where she paired similar value colours together. It made it look like it all went together, but was still occasionally making rows and stripes.
After much deliberation, I initially chose a skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts – Socks that Rock in the colourway Garden Daze as my main colourway. I’ve had this skein for ages and even tried knitting Argante out of it, but it wasn’t looking right. My friend suggested I bring that skein shopping and pick 2 solids out of the variegated colours within it. I matched a solid light green (SweetGeorgia) and a solid fuschia (Swans Island) to the Garden Daze repeats.
Attempt #1: I cast on and was already into the 3 section (where you’re striping 3 colors). Unfortunately, it looked way too busy and just looked like yarn barf.
So I dropped the fuschia and picked up a darker semi-solid green (also Sweet Georgia). I hoped that this would make a mostly green shawl with occasional bursts of Socks that Rock.
Attempt #2: I didn’t like how busy it still looked. I decided that the Socks that Rock should not be the main colour.
Attempt #3: The main colour is the darker green, the first contrasting colour is Socks that Rock, and the second contrasting colour is the light green. I definitely liked how it was working up a lot better.
(colour is most true is this photo)
I’ve finally cast off, and I still need to block it.
Critique 1: I have so much yarn left over! Holy moly. The final section, which is supposed to be solid, I started doing longer stripes with the 2 contrasting colours, just trying to use up yarn.
Critique 2: It’s super curly. I know I haven’t blocked it yet, but you’d think that there would be instructions about “if you’re a tight knitter”. Apparently I didn’t do enough Ravelry homework (too busy colour-matching) because many knitters have noted this and suggest to include a YO and then drop it. However, I should reserve judgement until I finish blocking the FO.
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December 16, 2014 at 3:56 pm
Hi Monica – I met you at the Last Crumb a week or so ago :)
I had a very similar experience with my Colour Affection. I loved the FOs I saw in yarn stores, on Rav, etc. and I’m a big fan of Veera’s patterns but despite some of the yummiest yarns I’ve owned I could NOT get the colours to match properly.
I had two skeins of Tosh Merino Light – Wheat and Filigree, and one skein of essentially the same yarn as TML, in a colourway similar to Cousteau. I tried knitting a mini Colour Affection to test out the colour combo. I surveyed my knitter friends. I tried another swatch, shuffling up the main and secondary colours. I just could NOT get it to work, and my colourways were just slightly tonal, not fully variegated like yours.
In the end, I concluded that Colour Affection is a pattern that does better at moving yarn through LYS KALs than it does as an actual garment. I even did the YO trick to make the edge a little less curly and still ended up with a strange shape – which in the fingering weight ends up being like a half-circular blanket you wear on your neck. Sigh.