More Colour

I was exhausted yesterday, but not too exhausted to enjoy consolidating my learning from the day before. I spent several happy hours pasting up the samples from my design board and adding a few other yarns out of my stash. I was so pleased with the process that I didn't want to put the board away. So it's leaning up against my wall where I can see it from my armchair. I realised as I was pasting it all up that there is not a scrap of blue to be seen on the entire board--that has got to be a first for me! The lesson of mixing with black was also reinforced as I mixed up a dyepot of landscape "wattle" with just a crumb of "currawong" and dyed up 30g of silky mohair which I'd spun up a few days ago. More on that later--it's drying as we speak.

The colour wheel was next. I started to spin up the colour swatches on one of my drop spindles. That gives me a double benefit: the more I handle the fibre, the more I learn from it; plus the colour is more intense and appears better blended when spun. It was my fellow student, M's idea to use the drop spindle--good one! It handles the tiny quantities easily and saves me occupying yet another bobbin with an unfinished sample. It also makes it easy to just do a bit more every now and then.

As you can see, I'm about 2/3 of the way through the samples. I had plenty of fibre in each sample, so I've saved a bit to take an extra step. I want to blend another set of in between colours--so doubling the number of steps in my colour wheel. I have visions of doing some more blending again, but I won't commit to that until I've got this lot finished. I guess that means it's time to leave the computer and head back to the fibre. Colour is just so good for me!