The other day I went out to the barn for early morning chores. When I opened
the barn doors, I looked through our bare woods and across the neighbor's
field to see the sun coming up. I thought the colors were so lovely: pale
pinks, peaches, purples, blues, greens, grays. I wished I'd brought my
camera.
One of a weaver's many decisions in project planning is color. Sometimes I
know what I want, but often I'm pulling out dozens of yarns to see what color combination inspires me. Sometimes it takes me days and days to decide. What if I had a selection of palettes available from which to
choose? Nature always inspires me, so what if I took photos around the
homestead and used Gimp (my photo editor) to pull out a variety of colors to
make color palettes?
Here are my first ones, using Gimp's color picker and bucket fill tools to create
the palette.
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| January Daybreak |
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January Daybreak color palette
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| January Sunrise |
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| January Sunrise color palette |
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| Winter Evergreens |
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| Winter Evergreens color palette |
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| Pine Cones |
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| Pine Cones color palette |
Of course, more colors could be added for each palette. But I think for weaving, quilting, or knitting, these will work well for choosing color combinations. For the yarns, I have several options. One is that it will help me choose color combinations from my stash. Another would be dyeing my own yarns. I don't feel I need to be exact in my color matching; close enough would be good enough for me.
Being a color person, this exercise is quite fascinating to me and I've been making more to form a collection. I can see them forming seasonal categories. Not sure yet if I'll print them out, although a booklet would be helpful. But to start, I have them here on my blog.
4 comments:
lovely palettes, Leigh. The challenge for me is having the yarns on my shelf that reflect the colors in the paper palette. Are you familiar with online random stripe generators? They can be helpful in designing stripes in warp and weft. There are a variety available, just google and pick one you like.
Valerie, thank you! I haven't tried picking out any of these palettes from my yarns yet, but I can see how matching them will be difficult. Even so, digital colors aren't specifically accurate, so I'm thinking I'll have to settle for close enough.
I do recall the random stripe generator, but had forgotten all about it. I'm always thinking Fibonacci sequences for my stripes, although I've used bar codes too. I'll have to give the generator a try! Random is never as easy as it seems. :)
I have to add that I may use some of these for future dyeing projects. Not that that will be any easier!
Hi, Leigh, I just want to say thank you for your informative blog. In December, I acquired a new to me Glimakra 120 Standard, 10 shafts/10 treadles. Of course it was in pieces and I was just a little intimidated in 1.) putting it all back together, 2.) warping it, 3.) tying up the treadles and lamms and 4.) actually weaving on it. I read and reread your posts about setting up your loom. Your narration of the process and pictures helped immensely!
I, too, made mistakes, starting with a warping reel error (first time ever using one) that messed up the middle 1/3 of my threads. I also mixed up the upper and lower lamms but it was a good learning experience. Actually the treadle/lamm part was was simple, thanks to the Vav Stuga tie up system. Simple and it makes sense. Still, I, or my dyslexia, switched the lamms. I know better now.
Anyway, I am weaving! And it works! So many people cheered my on through this process and you were one of them. As your entries progressed, I was cheering you on, too.
By the way, your table loom in those pictures looms so much like mine, only an older version. Same levers, same flat bars for the metal heddles with the screws that are a pain to manipulate. Mine is 24 inches wide and was made in Seattle by a company called Rasmussen. If yours is a Rasmussen, there would be a pressed into the wood label with the name and date it was made. I actually have 2 now, since I found one for my daughter. Both the looms were made in 1985. I love them.
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