Maia Spins

Sweater Swatch part 2

It has been a tough week.  I had some back stiffness that became bad enough to keep me home.  Thankfully, it got better in time for Bourbon night on Saturday (a monthly tasting of fine Bourbons at our house).  Sadly, half way through the evening, Roger had an allergic reaction to some fish and we were off to the local Emergency Room.  He spent the night, but was home in time for lunch the next day.  He is fine now.  I am very grateful for the miracle of modern medicine and the wonderful staff at Alta Bates.

Here is the gang are before the dinner break of doom.

From the left: Lear, Roger, Heidi, Neal, and Ken.  This picture was taken during a blind tasting.  Five samples are poured for each person and they taste them trying to decide which they like best and what they may be. 

But this is a fiber blog, so enough of Bourbon and angst.

In round one of the Maisle sweater swatching, the horizontal stripes were too strong and it lacked a spark.

Ronni suggested that I switch around the individual motifs.  The two rows were different heights (13 rows and 17 rows) so I spread them out and tweaked them to emphasize diagonal lines.  In black & white I like it a lot. (Editted to put up the correct graph.)

So a swatching we will go.  It is actually the fourth swatch (the first and third not being worthy of your time and attention).  I found another orange to ease to transition from reds to yellow and an eggplant for pop at the center of the burgundy.  It does have more pop in person.

Here it is tiled (click for big as always).  As before the horizontal is too strong.  The diagonals get lost and the vertical isn't very strong either.  Sigh.

Roger has a great eye.  We concluded that I should remove the white (at the eggplant row) which will decrease the lemon yellow to one row.  That will mean the greens will be stronger throughout the motifs.  I could even remove the lemon yellow from the greens.  I am also thinking about adding a black at the center of the dark greens.  Maybe I need to remove the lemon yellow from the oranges too.

Thoughts?  suggestions?

A Sweater Swatch

Yesterday I had a lovely Mother's Day.  We were still basking in the joy of the Plinkety Pleasures show put on by 5 Cent Coffee et al.  Those folks never disappoint!  5 Cent's version of Total Eclipse of the Heart is ringing in my ears.  It was fabulous (in a sincerely cheesy and dramatic way). 

We had chorizo and popovers (my favorite!) with homemade jam for brunch.  A strange combination, but hey, it tasted great.

For dinner, Kay made traditional Jamaican food.  Beans and rice with coconut milk, brown stew pork, and fresh carrot juice.  Boy, was that good!  She even cleaned the kitchen and washed the dishes.  What a treat. 

I am very grateful to have her in my life.  Thank you Kay! Mwah!

Sweater Business

Thank you for all the support and ideas (and promises to prod me) for my sweater project.  I really appreciate your input.

On the yarn crawl, I also got some Jamieson yarn for a Fair Isle sweater.  I got the DK weight (despite Janine's sage advice).  I was worried that too fine of a project would keep me from feeling enough accomplishment and I would get stalled.  It will be a cardigan with set-in sleeves and corrugated ribbing.  I may try Janine's Shaped Shoulders in the Round.

I didn't show the yarn earlier because a couple of colors were missing.  They are now here and swatching has commenced.  I started with a Saxon design, but it was too fugly murky.  We will not be viewing that one.  I decided to go back to basic principles.  Some graph paper and doodling got me a pattern I like.  I believe that good Fair Isle patterns have a lot of movement.  There should be more than horizontal stripes.  Marina wrote a great post to show this idea.  With this in mind I started by making  lines and arrows in all three directions: horizontal, vertical, and diagonally.  And, then fill it in for design and to decrease float length.

I am fairly happy with the pattern.  This is a rough chart (with a few errors in it).  I made the chart in Excel by making the cells small and square.  Then I just selected cells to paint with gray.  It is clunky and crude, but it is software I already own.

Here is my swatch (as usual, click for big):
The colors are great for me.  I think it needs something more though.  The transition from Amber (orange) to Buttercup (darker yellow) is too abrupt.  I don't have the pop colors either.  It feels a little flat.

My colors are all Jamieson.  The greens in order are: #825 Olive, #233 Spagnum, #147 Moss, #1140 Granny Smith, #365 Chartreuse, and #350 Lemon.  The Red-Yellows in order are #187 Sunrise, #587 Madder, #578 Rust, #478 Amber, #182 Buttercup, #350 Lemon, and #104 Natural White.

Here is the swatch tiled to give a sense of how the garment will look.

What do you think?  What colors should I add? or remove? 

Modifications to the chart?  It may need more emphasis on the diagonals.

Brutal honesty is requested.