We Name Babies. . . Can We Not Name Colours?

Subtitle: Sometime the Names Don't Come Immediately, but Naming Our Creations Are Important

Thus begins my post on the now finished Moderne Baby Blanket a là Ann and Kay of Mason Dixon fame.

Mason Dixon Knitting's Moderne Baby Blanket
Yarn: Cotton Classic byTahki in #3936 (Lilac) and #3610 (Sage) and Reynolds Gypsy in #408 (Eggplant) and #420 (Olivette)

What is it with yarn manufacturers that don't name their colours? It is one of the funnest things about creating the colours... even Jamieson's Shetland, which includes a line of a gazillion colours - and something like 37 of them are varieties of blue - has named all their colours. Tahki and Reynolds: where has the romance gone?

So I have named the colours of Cotton Classic and Gypsy used for the this terrifically fun baby blanket, which is winging it's way to Atlanta to live with baby Charlotte.

The blanket came out great, I love the colour mix, and it went faster than I thought it would. Loved the picking up stitches and starting a new block in a different direction, and I found myself looking forward to the next cast off/cast on and how the new colour block would change the whole vibe of the blanket.... Well, THEN I visited Cara this morning and her Random-Number-Generator-Brilliant-Madness-Blanket-Plan that will come to rule the world, and thought.... wow. I coulda maybe just kept on going... but the early arrival baby needed her blank-y, so I stopped, put the border on, and sent her on.

It's funny though, I noticed that my hands hurt after a few hours of knitting this one, more than they ever have, and I don't know if it was the speed knitting (to get to the next colour) or the weight of the cotton, or what, but breaks were key to finishing without damage to the most necessary of knitting tools, the hands.

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Daylily Socks Swatching

Which leads me to another hand bender: Socks. I am swatching the Daylily for my first pair of socks... looking like it will be #1s, yup, dpn #1s...

But with the loveliness of this particular sock yarn who could be bothered by the pointy madness of 5 #1 needles... and anyway, this sock yarn has a name, (thank you La) and thus must be created into something... soon.

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On the dyeing front, I finally got up the nerve to dye the 2 650 yard skeins of Silk and Ivory that I bought about 2 months ago. (50% Silk and 50% Merino)

I was nervous about felting happening, and nervous about it just plain turning out bad, and though the gold is seeming a little bright in the dried skeins, the pull ball is looking JUST how I imagined it would. I skipped the re-skeining as this will be knit right up into a shawl using the Handmaiden stitch pattern for the Storm Water Shawl from Ciobar Fibre Designs and Handmaiden.

OH, and the colour name... that would be Star Island Summer Sunset.

Comments

[Anne]

Yep - I was eyeing that shawl pattern too. Have you worked with the seaweed yarn that it originally was knit in?

[Lotta]

The baby blanket is really pretty -you're almost turning me into a purple-lover! :) I find that my hands hurt, too, after knitting with cotton. I don't know if it's the weight of the yarn so much, or just the in-flexibility of it that causes your muscles to work harder. Having a weak wrist, I've decided I don't really like working with cotton.
Gorgeous dye job again on the Star Island Summer Sunset!

[hege]

I love the color names, too! And your Star Island Summer Sunset looks beautiful. The blanket looks beautiful, too, great colors! I think you are right about the cotton, it causes problems because it's heavier, and also because it's less elastic. You need a break with some bouncy wool again. :)

[margene]

The baby blanket is fabulous! The colors are unusual and that makes it more lovely! Love the name of the sock yarn, too!!

[Jennifer]

Star Island Summer Sunset is Gorgeous! Great dye job. It'll make a fabulous shawl.

Don't worry, you'll get used to the toothpicks, ahem, I mean size 1 DPNs.

What a sweet baby blanket! I love it.