Heather's color thoughts

I'm joining the group a bit late, so expect my progress to lag the rest for awhile....

Last week, I stared at the color wheel trying to make my color choices. I wanted to choose colors that would challenge me in some way--I hate them or they simply aren't what I usually use in my projects. Surprisingly, none of the colors on the wheel fell into either one of these categories.

In the end, I chose violet for #1 because I like deep purple, but I tend to shy away from lighter/pastel versions of it. Blue is #2 because it is a good complement to the other colors I chose. Orange is #3 because it can be a challenge to control the hue.

Yellow is #4 because it will force me to discipline my dyeing technique to make it lemon or butter yellow instead of a deep yellow orange. For #5, I will thoroughly blend black with the orange because the outcome seemed like the most unpredictable for me. Blue lightly blended (maybe even just layered) with white will be #6. I've been spinning some layered batts lately and I liked the effect I got from it.

For #7, blue and orange will be plied together. I think I'll try a square with the straight colors and a square with the black/orange blend. Violet and yellow plied together will be for #8. While I enjoy working with color in general, this combination is probably the one I consciously avoid the most, especially the lighter shades. Lastly, violet and blue plied together is for the #9 square because I'm curious how a strong blue and a lighter purple will look together. I may end up plying a strand of blue/white and the violet together for an extra square.

I've got some washed locks sitting around and it would be a good de-stashing exercise to dye them up to make these samples. My hope is that this project will give me a lot more confidence with both dyeing and blending base colors into new and different yarns.

My dyeing experience has been based exclusively on Kool-Aid and food color paste using small quantities of finished yarns. It will be interesting to see how locks respond to the dyes and how I have to adjust my dyeing techniques to account for the difference in the physical volume of fiber.

Hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew...!