Into Neutral

Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.
    ~"Closing Time," Semisonic (come on, admit it: you are humming the song right now....)

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
    ~ Maria Robinson

I love this time of year. As the days get shorter and shorter and the sunsets seem to shout out loud the sun's reluctance to leave so early (all right, I totally understand that we're talking about parabolas and stuff--let me wax poetic for a moment), I feel a surge of energy, a strong desire to end the year with a clean slate. I've been finishing up lots of languishing projects—often, that "finishing up" simply means I bought the buttons and sewed them on, but in other cases much more effort was involved.

You, the readers of this blog, might have the impression that I knit only fancy multicolor stuff. And I do. Most of the time. But I was struck by one thing when I looked at the odds and ends piled up as I completed one project after another:

They are all gray, and solid colored at that! Sweaters, vests, mitts, scarves.... 

To me, a native of Seattle, gray is the color of the holidays. No sunlight glistening off snow for us! No, a chilling damp is more characteristic of our solstice. The cheeriness of bright Christmas lights to get us through shining against an early twilight gloom. Gray is what I know. It is comforting. And apparently what I'm knitting these days! 

It shouldn't be surprising that I love a neutral—neutrals set off the colorwork that is my passion. Lovely examples of this synergy at work are shown in the Fall 2011 issue of Hand/Eye magazine in the article called "Introducing Gray," which explores how the traditional exuberant colorwork of Guatemala is altered by the addition of gray to emphasize the motifs and colors that get lost in the traditional layout. (This issue of Hand/Eye is called Global Color and it is LOVELY!)

But back to that issue of endings and beginnings. In addition to the basket of UFOs I have lots and lots of small bits of Shetland yarn in, quite literally, hundreds of colors. These are a bit harder to finish off: too valuable to toss, too time consuming to use up quickly, too various to look good tossed together without a bit of planning.

To the rescue: Several patterns have popped up on Ravelry that are perfect for using up your Shetland bits! These patterns are low stress, high fun, relatively quick ways to play with color freed of the need for symmetry or value sequencing or repetition.

• The Inspira Cowl (Photo above is the one I made using the magic ball method and a tweedy grayed raspberry color as the coordinating neutral—Gingko is the model.) There are many awesome examples of this cowl on Ravelry and some interesting notes on sizing to be found.
• The Dan Hat: a simple cap in tweed stitch
• The Beekeeper's Quilt: this large project is created out of small stuffed hexagons that you can knit on the go
• The Mosaic Mitts: a variation on Eunny Jang's pattern for fingerless mitts
• The Impossible Cushion (no pattern, but some directions)
• Catch: a slip-stitch hacky sack!
• And finally, a tour-de-force version of the Ten Stitch Blanket for inspiration

Now go clean out that collection of Shetland leftovers in preparation for 2012! If you have run across some other patterns, please let me know.

If the idea of pulling together random colors seems foreign or scary to you, if your previous experiments have gone sadly awry and you can't figure out what went wrong, I highly recommend Laura Bryant's A Knitter's Guide to Color, a DVD that explores how to use random colors together in a pleasing manner. 

Comments

[Deb Tanner]

Since retiring, I've learned to love January (I live south of Seattle); it's my "quiet month". Like you, I tidy up loose ends and set new directions (I start my year in February, my birth month). Somehow, it makes the colors that come later in the year much more enjoyable.

Thanks for the thoughts and the pattern list; I especially like the mitts.

A happier new year to you, Janine.

[Deb Tanner]

P.S.: thanks also for the introduction to Hand/Eye! I will subscribe.

[mary mcmahon]

Janine, I sent a Rav message to Cozyknitting on Dec 6th about the April workshop and have not received a reply. would you mind forwarding my email address to her? thanks. I take it that the NY workshops are not open? It would be closer for me. mary McMahon in cincinnati. wfdmary@aol.com