I realised I left out part of the story of the wedding present blanket. The picture above shows the first square, which was close to finished before I ripped it back, leaving only the centre orange and pink sections.
I'm pretty sure that those bizarre maroon and brown stripes actually looked okay as I was knitting them. It was only after a few more stripes followed them that I realised they were really jarring and weren't going to work. This was disheartening to say the least. I put it aside for a few weeks/months, and started the second square, before I could make the decision to rip.
These photos were taken in January, when I ripped out most of that first square. It felt SO good to get that done and be able to make progress again. It had been sitting there for so long, weighing on my mind. The funny thing is, as I was ripping out, as soon as I had removed the outer stripes and just had the strong pink next to the brown and maroon stripes, it all looked okay again. Which made me feel better about how I had managed to put them in and keep knitting past them in the first place.
So, stripes and colour combinations can be tricky. Colours that all seem to play well together when they are balls of wool in a bag behave differently when placed in a stripe sequence. And you can't see the overall effect of a stripe sequence when you are only partway into it. (This seems more obvious as I write it!). Finally, yet again I had to simplify the set of colours I wanted to work with. In addition to the maroon and brown, I had also thrown some cream into the bag. But in the end I kept it to just oranges and pinks, plus that silvery grey accent. I still would like to do a blanket with lots more colours, and be able to throw everything at it. Maybe a similar design, but with very thin stripes of colour, could be the answer.
1 comment:
It was a tough decision to rip back, but as you know, the right one. The finished blanket looks fabulous.
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