Design Workshop

I found yesterday's workshop at the Guild very worthwhile. The day started with a couple of inconveniences--I took my wheel along, on the bus and tram, only to find it wasn't needed. And my choice of pictures--which was very much needed--had been left at home. Oh well, sigh; take a deep breath and dive into the workshop.

We spent the morning blending coloured tops for a colour wheel--I can never have too many colour wheels. The next exercise was blending and matching colours from a marvelous coral reef photo.

In the afternoon we created a design board. We used it as a source to blend colours and textures to use as inspiration for creating yarns. Since I'd left my pictures at home, I chose some more from T's box of magazines. I stuck with my personal challenge to go outside my usual palette: I worked on mixing three colours--

• the deep dark brown of the lizard's belly: red and black with a hint of yellow;
• the olive green at the top left of the pic: citrus yellow and black--unexpected!
• and the burnt orange of the fried dumplings on the lower right: more red, yellow and black.

For someone who has tended to avoid using black in colour mixing, it was an enlightening experience. I bought a jar of black (Currawong) landscape dye before I went home to reinforce the lesson.

As often happens, by the time I was packing up to go home, my stuff appeared to have multiplied exponentially. T was kind enough to give me a ride home. As a bonus, we got to have a quick coffee and chat. I'm afraid I talked her ear off--it's been too long since we caught up. So, all in all a very worthwhile day. Today I'm exhausted and there's even more stuff on my table to be dealt with. Was it only last week I managed to get it all cleared!