Knitting

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Color Works! Finally A Color Guide For The Rest Of Us!

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Color Works, The Crafter’s Guide to Color by Deb Menz, Available from Amazon

Hardcover and spiral bound, built to take with you and take the abuse.

Stumped about which colors to use in a craft project? Ths book give you practical, hands-on tools for using color in nine crafts, including knitting, spinning, weaving, quilting, surface design (including stenciling and rubber stamping), hand and machine embroidery, beadwork and paper collage.
Color theory principls are demystified with clear explanations, examples, and more than 270 hand-crafted swatches that bring color palettes to life in all nine mediums.
Contents include: Describing Color, Basic Color Relationships, Understanding Value, Color Contrasts, Color Harmonies, Characteristics of Media (knitting, spinning, weaving, embroidery, quilting, collage…), Choosing Colors and Design.
Includes several pull out tools to take with you to make sure you pick colors that harmonize and play well together.

If you signed up for a Color and Texture class in college, I imaging this would be one of the textbooks that you’d be reading.

So much information. One of the most useful tips I’ve ever received for matching colors is to use the black and white settings on my camera to take a picture. Almost like magic, the hues, and shades just jump out of the frame! It actually made me commit to memory, that particular feature on my digital camera. That in itself is huge!

When asked about color, Eunny Jang sums it up by saying: “Eunny Jang says: ” “Pick two color families (hues). Then pick three variations of each–dark, medium, light. Now you have six colors that go together beautifully!”

Sandy Wiseheart of Knitting Daily has worked up two different swatches using the principles in this book. To download the charts for these swatches, go here (you have to be a member and log in to get the swatch charts).

Have you read?

Knit Little Fish to Use Your Yarn Scraps

I rarely understand why something becomes a trend in crafting. Gnomes and geese are both cute I guess, but I never thought we’d be making them for all seasons. (See, for example, this collection of gnome knitting patterns, or these knit geese.)

Another one I don’t totally understand is sardines or little fish more generally. Sure, they’re cute, and the shape is fun, but I had no idea when I was sharing this pattern for a fish-shaped pouch last year that it would become a hugely popular pattern that people are still searching for on the site. It is pretty cute, though, so if you weren’t around then or don’t remember you should got check it out. 

Recently another fishy knitting pattern crossed my monitor: the little knit fish from Classical Songbird Designs. 

Just as the name suggests, these fish are little, about 4.5 inches or 11 cm from end to end. They look like little sardines and take about 12 yards of sock yarn to make. 

You can even make a two-tone fish and use just 6 yards of each color. 

This sounds to me like just about the perfect use for the yarn that’s left over after knitting a pair of socks, or a mini skein or several that have been sitting around unused in your stash. 

The fish are knit flat in one piece, which makes it easy to stitch on the eyes with more yarn or embroidery floss before stuffing, and you can stitch up the sides while you stuff (though it’s not a very big piece so you could probably stitch and then stuff, finishing with the end of the tail). 

Because I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one wondering, I measured an Altoids box and as the pattern is written the fish are a little too big to fit in it (the box is about 4 inches/10 cm long). But you could make the fish a little smaller if you want to make a box of them. Or just make a fishy bag to put them in!

You can grab the free pattern for the little knit fish at Classical Songbird Designs. 

[Photo: Classical Songbird Designs.]