A Life of Colour

Fire & Magnolia.

As you may know, Anne Hanson and I were teamed up for the Yarn4Socks.com December sock club and when Valerie told us the element and theme for the month was fire, I did a bit of a happy dance. Anything to do with red makes my heart sing when designing a colourway so I was very excited to see what Anne and I would dream up.

After a few emails with Anne, we both agreed the colourway would be red but within that red, Anne asked that I incorporate a few bursts of orange to reflect the flickering of the flames. With that, thoughts started to churn in my head and when I got to the dye pots, I crossed my fingers and hoped that my vision would translate to the yarn and then to Anne's knitting.

I sent the skein off to Anne and I'm really excited to see the colourway swatch! It's working up as I had hoped and Anne is really pleased with how it's working up with the design she had in mind. I'm elated!

Check out the little sneak peek from Anne's blog today...I'm really excited to see how the sock progresses and Anne's design unfolds! Isn't it gorgeous so far?

To add a bit more fuel to the fire, each and every skein for the club is going to be somewhat unique - all of them are going to be similar in colours with variations in colour placement and in colour intensities. As Anne and I talked about, flames flicker and are never the same so we decided to incorporate that element into the theme as well. So if you'd like to join the club, hop on over if you haven't already!

In other knitting news, I'm excited to have finally finished another sock! This one is done up in the Magnolia colourway from the ART WALK Sock Yarn Club and I'm really pleased with how the colourway reflects the art piece:

And now that my needles are empty for another sock, I'm patiently waiting for Anne to finish her fire-themed pattern so I can cast that on next.  I just couldn't resist keeping a skein for myself!

Art walk.

Do you enjoy visiting art museums or are inspired by works of art? When I started the ART WALK sock yarn club almost 2 years ago (wow!) I had just that in mind for myself as a dyer - wanting to be inspired by some of the masters of colour. As a dyer, it's always fascinating to see how others combine colours and over almost 2 years, I can honestly say I've enjoyed every single month. It is indeed a lovely challenge monthly to try to come up with a colourway that will compliment some of these beautiful works.  For instance, last month I chose a fabulous painting by Claude Monet. Well, as you know, he's definitely a master in his genre! I thought I was going to do a colourway of the overtones but in the end, that month, the yarn did what it wanted and decided to reflect the undertones of the painting. I was more than pleased and quite elated. 

Not only has this club been a wonderful way of walking through a lot of art pieces but it's also stretched my creativity as an artist with yarn. Some months I can envision the colourway and paint it onto the yarn without too much trouble and other months, the yarn decides what colourway it's going to be. It's really rather fascinating and it's been a learning experience for me in seeing how some of the masters use and combine colours. Click here to see all the colourways we've explored over the past 2 years.

Have you been involved in the club yet? If not, come on by and join! August is our anniversary month and there doesn't seem to be an end date in sight! Art Walk is also a month-to-month subscription with a lot of flexibility built into the payment schedule so it's easy for people to join as they like.