Meme: on a variety of topics

[pensnest]

turlough asked for Colours.


It's been quite a challenge to even figure out where to start with this post, because… colours!

I love colours. I love soft, subtle combinations, and rich, bold ones. I love deep purples and blues, bright oranges and reds, light greens and yellows. Anyone who has seen me knitting anything will know that I can't resist… colours. Okay, that's a bit silly, as it would be a challenge to knit without any colours at all, but still. There are so many gloriously coloured yarns, I only wish I had time to knit them all!

I've been trying to figure out honestly what my favourite colour might be, but I don't think I can. However, I wandered into one of the art shops in St Albans not long ago, and fell in love with another picture, at which point I realised that all the pictures I've ever fallen in love with are in the red/brown/orange/gold spectrum. This particular one is brown and gold dandelion heads on a textured bronze background. It's gorgeous. Of course, it's not just about the colours, there is interesting textural contrast too, and the thing is only slightly representational. I like the mostly-abstract.

So, red-brown-orange-gold it is. Probably not surprisingly, these are the colours of our living room, and the two Kerry Darlington pictures fit in there very nicely. Its not that I don't love blues, greens, purples, or even pinks and yellows, but I suppose the reds are more Me. My lounge, as turlough knows, has soft orange walls (not quite terracotta, but tending that way), a dark brown sofa, a dark red sofa, red blinds and fabulously embroidered orange saris hung at the windows (as decoration, not curtains). It is unfortunately marred by the jarring green of the DVD boxes and the really-needs-replacing off-white of the ancient carpet. Oh well.

Oddly, I have not knitted very much in these colours. I did do browns for Beast's sweater and later for his Dad's, and black-and-reds for Boy's sweater, and a shades of red and orange which… I don't even know what happened to that one. But for myself I've mostly created blue, purple or pale things. I wonder why? And these days, somehow the most tempting yarns seem to be blues and purples, or pale colours. I do have quite the collection of interesting scarves and shawlettes now, in purple-and-black, different blues, yellow-and-pink, hmm. I should remedy the lack of hand-knitted reds at once some point by knitting a symphony of scarlet, gold and brown. However, it'll have to wait. I do have a lot of stash to go through, and have created a few 'stash buster' shawls which are quite successful: what I do is decide on a basic palette, then put all the balls of yarn together on the floor in the sunlight and put the ones that don't fit back into the drawers. I'm quite good at this.

I'm not so good at figuring out which colours I should wear. Bun and I had a Go at my wardrobe a few years back, and draped me in all the garments to see whether the colours worked on me or not. We should probably do that again this Christmas, as I've forgotten a lot of the rules we established. I have a tendency to fall for garments not because they suit me but because they are exciting, which as often as not means, they're fabulous colours. I wish I had the self-discipline to figure out the right palette and stick to it, but I suspect I will always succumb to the wrong things…

And, really, is something 'wrong' if it's a gorgeous colour that just makes you feel happy?


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Comments

[kira-j.livejournal.com]

I can't pick a favorite color it's impossible. I know I love wearing white, it just feels right, I wish I could wear it all the time! And yes to reds. I love wearing red, it's such a powerful color to wear!

[pensnest]

I think how a colour (or garment) makes you feel is much more important than how it looks, and I love your emotional response to colours here.

[frausorge]

And, really, is something 'wrong' if it's a gorgeous colour that just makes you feel happy?

Exactly! I think what you wear should be at least as much about how you feel in it as about how you look in it, if not more.

[pensnest]

Yes! I mean, I suspect some of the things I wear don't really *suit* me, but nobody will pry my magenta Camp Sparkle T-shirt from me!

[watervole]

I don't believe all this nonsense about people needing to have particular colours. I choose to wear colours to suit my mood.

[pensnest]

That "oh, you're a Winter" stuff? Indeed! I did find, in my experiment with Bun, that some colours do look better on me, which is reasonable, but if I want to wear an orange T-shirt (orange suits no-one except Lance Bass), that's fine with me.

[turlough]

I didn't use to like red/orange/gold colours at all but something's changed and the last few years I've become more and more enamoured by them. I wonder if it's a byproduct of age? :-)

My wardrobe's been mostly black for something like 30 years now. Periodically I've added splashes of colour but the base have always been solid black. I've no idea if it should suit me though, it's practical.

[pensnest]

Interesting thought. I think I've always been partial to the rich red/gold colours, but I've always been partial to intense colours of most kinds anyway. At present, I'm tending to translate 'colours I like' into 'yarns', and although I fell in love with some beautiful subtle combinations in 'Glorious Knitting', I think it must have been the brights that got me. At present I'm knitting something in dark grey/orange/pinkish red/silver white silk. Yummy!