kimley knits

Yep, it’s that potholder swappin’ time of year which means I’m busy crocheting potholders once again. Last year’s swap was so much fun that I’ve actually been looking forward to this year’s right since the minute I sent last year’s off. Crazy, huh?!?

I’ve got a nice stash of Drops Muskat cotton from Nordic Mart and I’ve been swatching away and think I’ve finally decided upon this pretty pinwheel motif that I got from one of my Japanese stitch dictionaries. I’m still tweaking it as my front is clearly too small so I’ll add another round so it doesn’t pucker.

Come join us in the potholder swap group on Ravelry so you can catch a little potholder frenzy yourself.

As a graphic designer, one of my favorite parts of the job is playing around with color and seeing how different colors interact with one another. It can be quite shocking at times just how different colors will look against a variety of other colors. A very intense color theory class that I took in college taught me all the ins and outs of this while doing all those crazy Joseph Albers exercises. Fun!

So now it’s great to see this working up in my knitting. No doubt, Joseph’s wife Anni Albers, a textile artist enjoyed this kind of fiber excitement too! I don’t normally do a lot of color work so I don’t really get to play with color combos that much when it comes to my knitting but I’m having a ton of fun with my Spectra Scarf watching how the Noro is working up next to this dark reddish brown color (the Kale colorway in Madelinetosh Merino Light) versus how it looked in the ripple scarf I crocheted a while back. The photo above shows the two photographed together and there is a very noticeable difference in how the Noro colors look. They seem so much more saturated surrounded by the darker color than on their own. Love it!

It was my father’s birthday the other day and after having to look at his pathetic excuse for a scarf for some time now, I decided it was my knitterly obligation to improve his sartorial flair. As many knitters know, it’s never easy knitting for men. They don’t want anything too fancy and us knitters don’t want to knit anything too boring. I concocted this pattern so that it was simple but had just a little bit of zing to make it both interesting for me to knit and hopefully interesting to look at as well. Knit three rows, purl one and a four stitch cable along one side. Knit in beautiful MadelineTosh Merino Light in the Boxwood colorway. My dad said he loved it. Now if only it hadn’t been 80 degrees on his birthday…

>>> Details on Ravelry