I'm taking a short break from knitting up my own designs to knit someone else's pattern for a change. I started Elphaba a couple of weeks ago and it's coming along nicely. I saw the pattern on Ravelry more than three years ago and decided then I wanted to knit it but I'd been putting it off. Actually, that's the wrong phrase, I'd been saving it! Like you save your slice of chocolate cake, until just the right moment. I managed to acquire three well-matched skeins of Wollmeise Pure in Neptune Medium, and then put them away too, saving them for when I would use them to make this beautiful sweater.
Last autumn, I bought the pattern itself and have read it through several times but only actually started the sweater recently, having finally decided the time was right to tackle this pattern.
I will admit, making an adult size sweater in 4-ply weight yarn has been a bit of a mental hurdle to get over. In my mind, such thin yarn is for socks. Even baby clothes merit DK! 
I've also been a little nervous about getting the fit right. The elegance of Elphaba comes from its close-fitting lines, and I'm not the proportions of a standard dress size. My hips are a dress size bigger than my waist, and my bust is a dress size bigger than my hips. It makes clothes shopping a challenge, and wearing dresses is close to impossible, but when you're knitting your own you can shape to fit your own contours.
It's been an interesting experience too to work top-down. I've made top-down raglans for babies before but never for myself. 

I'm really enjoying the pattern so far. It's very well-written, and the instructions on how to modify the fit by adding bust darts are great. The designer's chatty style isn't what I'm used to in knitting patterns but I like it. I'm almost down to the lace hem detail already (I'm adding extra length before I work that because for all that I'm short in stature, I'm long in the torso so I'd prefer a slightly longer body for my sweater). I've added bust darts for a better fit at the top, and I also shaped the waist more dramatically than is written (working more decreases over the same length to keep the waist in the right place but make it smaller). I've never been able to try on as I worked before, but here is Elphaba so far.

Walking in my neighbourhood today, my attention was grabbed by the colour of the flowers on two hydrangea plants in a garden I passed. I find hydrangea flowers fascinating anyway because of the fact that the colour can be changed by increasing or decreasing the acidity of the soil. However, what struck me about these (and my apologies for the blurry photos but my phone camera is old and very basic!) was the shades of blue. As I walked on, I reflected on the colour blue. It is my favourite colour and has been since childhood. My bedroom when I was growing up was almost always papered in blue. (I do remember one design of little pink tulips on a white background, after my parents pleaded with me to pick something other than blue for a change, but that didn't last for long!) A look through my wardrobe will show a definite bias towards blue clothing. Even my car is blue!

I know I am attracted to blue yarn when choosing colours for projects or when shopping. I have two projects on the needles at the moment, and they're both blue! The sweater (on the right, it's the beginning of Elphaba by Mary Annarella) tends towards the teal-er end of the blue scale, but both that and the shawl I'm working on would definitely fall under the heading of 'blue'.

From there I got to wondering what it is about particular colours that attracts people. I mean, I like blue, yes, but there's also something about it that means that in a yarn shop, or a paint shop, or a clothing shop, or anywhere else where there's a large choice of similar items in a range of colours, I always find myself drawn towards the blue ones. There is something about blue as a colour that calls to me.
I had a search online and there's surprisingly little out there to explain it. There's a lot of psychobabble about what colours to wear to attract a potential partner or to strike a successful business deal, or about the emotions associated with different colours, but no scientific stuff about what it is about a certain wavelength of light (which is all colours are) that should be so attractive to different people.

There are particular colours or groups of colours that might suit people better, and there are a lot of internet articles about that as well. If you want to find out whether you're a "warm" or "cool" person, or which one of the four seasons you fit into (!?!), there are plenty of suggestions about that. Someone with an educated sense of what makes them look good might gravitate towards colours which they know enhance their appearance. For myself, I know I look better in cooler or blue-toned colours. I have pale, pink-toned skin, dark hair and eyes. Anything too yellow or orange makes me look ill. I look much better in bluer-toned shades. On the other hand, my sister with her green eyes and olive skin looks fantastic in the earth tones and autumnal shades that she always wears, which would make me look like I'd escaped from Plants vs Zombies. As an adult, one's favourite colour might be influenced by fashion or by knowing what looks good from a clothing (or make-up) point of view, but people often have a favourite colour from childhood and I wouldn't have thought knowing whether they were a "deep winter" or a "cool summer" would influence a child's decision to pick red or purple as their favourite colour.

I did find one article on a psychology website which suggested that colour preference has a learned component. If your parents always dress you in a certain colour, or decorate the home in a certain colour, you associate that colour with a sense of security or well-being. With this theory in mind I thought about myself and my own children. I know there are a lot of pictures of me as a small child (not old enough to be making my own wardrobe purchasing choices!) wearing a lot of blue. Because I like blue, I choose a lot of blue clothing for my children. How much of that is because they're both boys and a lot of boys' clothing is blue is hard to say, but I know I definitely go for blue if there's a choice. My six-year-old is old enough to express a preference, and believe me he's not shy about doing so, and he also prefers blue. He says his favourite colours are "light blue and bright blue". On the other hand, his little brother who is two years old and so still at the age of being dressed in what he is put in also wears a lot of blue but, if asked, will tell you his favourite colour is "purple". Take from that what you will!

I'm still none the wiser about what it is that makes me choose blue, draws me to the colour in all its shades, almost to the exclusion of most other colours. I sometimes make myself pick another colour - I've been consciously trying out red recently, just to see what things look like in other colours. And when I say the exclusion of most other colours, I decided to pull my yarn stash out and see just how much of it is actually blue. It's quite astonishing, and perhaps a little embarrassing! For the purposes of the photos, I have included in "blue" anything that's on the bluer end of the blue-green spectrum, or the bluer end of blue-purple, and also any multicoloured yarns that are predominantly blue.

This is my collection of blue yarns.

That includes full skeins and partial ones, including a sweater quantity of navy DK, another sweater quantity of dark blue Rowan Kidsilk Haze, a few odd balls of DK in various shades of blue, a cone of blue lace weight, and most of the rest of it is skeins of sock yarn.
However, the picture that really puts it into context (and the reason why the photograph is deliberately off-centre) is this one, of my entire stash.

From these pictures, it's clear that at least half my yarn stash is blue, or variations on the theme thereof! There's a bit of undyed sock yarn (which may well become blue at some point in the future!), a little bit of red, a little bit of green, some oddments of neutrals, and two skeins that I decided were slightly too purple to be included in with the blues. This is the first time I've actually looked at my yarn by colour. I usually classify it by weight. I store it by weight and I buy it by weight. Clearly, though, whatever weight it is and for whatever project there's something about blue that I just can't resist!

Well, this is a new situation for me. I don't know what to knit! Usually I have a list, both mental and physical, and know exactly what's going to come next. Sometimes an unscheduled project sneaks in there as well. Maybe I get distracted by a sudden need to knit socks, or a trip to the cinema necessitates the making of an unplanned dishcloth, but on the whole I know what I'm going to be embarking upon once my current project is complete.

Yesterday I finished a pair of fingerless mitts I've been designing. The mitts themselves are blocked and drying. The pattern is partially formed, the first section typed up on the computer and the charts my usual scribbles on graph paper, soon to be Stitch-Mastery'd into existence! Under normal circumstances I would have more yarn caked up and be itching to start some Shiny New Thing. Today, you can see the tumbleweeds blowing through my knitting bag. Well, almost.

I don't understand it. I keep a running list of design ideas and, up till now, I've been ready to start the next one as soon as I can. Today, none of them are leaping in the air, shouting "Start me! Start me!" Then there's my Ravelry queue. 27 patterns long and none of them really grab me today.
My other way of deciding what to make is to go through my stash and see which yarn calls to me. Sometimes seeing a pretty colour, or feeling the squishy, or noticing a combination of two skeins together that I hadn't considered before triggers off something in my imagination and I know that's what I want to work with next. Not today.

Oh well, maybe I need to take this evening off. Watch some TV, have a bubble bath, read the rest of the book I've been trying to finish for weeks! Hopefully I'll feel more inspired tomorrow. In the meantime, if anyone sees my knitting mojo lying about, please hand it in to Lost Property!

Here we are in July, and I just released another shawl pattern. East Farleigh Bridge is named after, well, East Farleigh Bridge, a medieval stone bridge across the River Medway at the village of East Farleigh near Maidstone, Kent. My place of work is only a few miles from East Farleigh so I often drive over the bridge to get to or from work. The bridge itself is right beside the rail station, and the traffic gets stopped at a level crossing to let the trains come through. One evening while I was waiting in the line of cars to cross the railway line, I took time to really look at the bridge, and I was struck with the inspiration for a crescent shawl.

The stone archways became the scalloped edging with the lace arches above them. The sections in between the arches became the triangles of eyelets pointing down between the arches. The long narrow bridge (only wide enough for one car at a time) was the inspiration for the long narrow shape of the shawl itself. I began to mentally rummage through my yarn stash for a suitable wool and I remembered the beautiful crimson-red skein of Wollmeise Pure which I had bought with no specific plan in mind, just because I loved the colour. It seemed a perfect strong bright colour to partner with the strong lines of the arches and triangles of the shawl.
By the time the train had passed and the traffic was moving again, the shawl had taken shape in my mind. Shortly afterwards it also took shape on my needles!
The pattern is available through Ravelry by clicking this button!