Creative Knitting – Beyond Knit and Purl

During the process of knitting up my Sebright Hen and Chicks pillow, I have come up with some things that have made the project much easier.   The first thing is my “Knitting Palette.”  It is a 30 stitch sample of the yarns, and blends of yarn that I have chosen to use in the pattern.  By first experimenting with the colors, I was able to begin knitting on the picture, confident that the colors I chose would work.   Below is a photo of the sample that I uploaded to my Serif publishing program.  Once in Serif, I was able to label the colors and save the sample for future reference.

I have boxed the various shades with colored borders and written a description on the right.  The bottom section is a mix of Mohair lace weight and fingering yarn.  This blend of the two types of yarn added a bit of reality to my little “fuzz ball” chicks.  It worked great.   I even varied the amount of strands to see what it would do.

By adding an extra strand of the Mohair lace weight I was able to create a “relief sculpture” affect to the wing and belly area.   This expanded area is retracted to its proper gauge, by creating a yarn web across the back which is stuffed with a bit pf Polyfill.

And yes,  that’s” Scratch” on the ground, created by making small bobbles of blended yarn.  I got a kick out of making those.  Sorry for the side track – now back to the Yarn Palette.

The top half is the shades of color I chose  for my Sebright hen.  I began with Suede alone, knitted 4 rows.  Next, I blended one ply of Suede with one ply of Brass Heather.  That gave me a slightly darker golden tone.  The next 4 rows were done with Brass Heather alone.   In the blue section I blended Brass Heather and Doe, but this combo didn’t lead to much of a change. (scratch that one).  The next combo gave me a darker shade- yes, Brass Heather and Bison will do it.  All this prep took time, but I didn’t need to guess how it would look .  I worked for me!  by the way, the colors mentioned above are all from Knitpicks.com.

The next aid that really helped me was my MUSIC STAND.  Yep!  There it was, sitting there next to my harp doing nothing (I play mostly from memory anyway) and the light went on in my head, “Wait, you can use that to put your chart on.”  And so I did.  Now it is not sliding off my lap so I have to chase it all over the floor.

Little things mean a lot!!!!!

Just thought I’d share.

Happy Knitting

KT