You can never have too many colours, right?
This pile of colour pegs represents the planning for my new pattern, Rainbow Strip. This little wall hanging is my latest experiment with my colour pop technique, something I've been playing around with for years. Basically, it's a way of adding three dimensional coloured rolls to a plain knitted background. I've been fine-tuning how to actually do this with various projects until finally I think I've got a method I'm happy with.
Here are my first attempts at colour pops from more than ten years ago, all unpublished.
A slightly wonky purse in variegated sock yarn, two wristbands and a ring. As you can see, I was concentrating more on the texture than the colours here. I rather like the wristbands though; you probably can't see them in the photo but the black one has tiny little black beads sewn between the rolls of knitting.
Fast forward to 2012 and I contributed these blanket squares to a charity blanket campaign in aid of Refuge, organised by 'The Knitter' magazine. I wonder if anybody ever knitted them?
The next year I published a pattern for a Colour Pop Cuff which used garter stitch throughout.
In all the colour pop variations, the strips of colour are worked separately from the background colour and then joined together on the back. With these two patterns this was achieved with some dexterity and the knitting needles.
By 2016 I had developed the idea of 'zipping up' the strips with a sewing needle. This is the technique used for my Winter Rainbow scarf published at the start of the year. Having first worked in stocking stitch with the purl side as the right side and then in garter stitch, I'd now settled on stocking stitch with the knit side showing.
This is one my favourite scarves. Many of the scarves I design never get worn but I wear this one regularly; as well as being bright and cheerful, it's also nice and warm.
So far, so good. I then had a bit of a digression with my knitted rug pattern, Corduroy. The squares for this were knitted in solid colours with the rolls being purl side out stocking stitch. Closing the stocking stitch strips involved picking up stitches with a second needle and then knitting them together with those on the first needle on to a third. Confused? It's not as bad as it sounds, honestly.
I then had a bit of a break from the colour pops until earlier this year when I hit upon the idea of knitting a few, purely decorative things using the technique. The idea is that each will have a different theme and will use a different hanging method. Then knitters could use them to design their own Colour Pop art.
So far I've knitted two of these and am planning a third. If people like them (and I don't lose interest) I may go on to design a series of practical colour pop patterns.
Which takes me back to my Rainbow Strip.
In this pattern the colour pops are worked closely together. This caused me a problem as the white side borders were being pulled out of shape so I had to add short rows on each side to make it all lie flat. Other than that, it's quite a simple pattern that could easily be adapted to make a different sized hanging or to use different colours. Apparently, it's not always necessary to use 24 colours in one small project.
Actually, I think this would look good just in shades of one or two colours as well. What about blues and greens, perhaps with a wider border that you could decorated with seaside charms or buttons? I used wooden sticks and a curtain ring to hang my finished strip which looks lovely against my sunshine yellow wall.
The next Colour Pop pattern will be this Christmas Tree which I'll publish later this year.
This pattern develops the basic idea to include different widths and depths of colour pops, making the technique much more versatile.
And the pattern after that ... is still only a sketch.
