Friday 14 July 2017

No such thing as too much navy?

At the minute my knitting is going though a definite colour phase: last week I cast off a navy blue children's jumper (the gingerbread man jumper - the pattern will be coming at the end of the summer), then promptly cast on... a navy blue children's jumper (a second sample for From Breton with Love, after the first one got damaged by the sun while I was blocking it; the pattern will be available as soon as I can get some photos taken). Which is already quite a lot of navy blue, and next up in the queue are two more navy jumpers and a navy cushion cover, which is starting to feel like navy blue overkill!


Navy blue isn't always the easiest colour yarn to work with. I don't recommend working with navy blue in the evenings in poorly lit rooms: it's really hard to count rows in dark colours unless the lighting is really bright, and as someone who works by reading their knitting rather than taking notes, that's a real issue, and not one I have a way round, especially as I do a lot of basic knitting while sitting with my daughter in semi-darkness while she goes to sleep in the evening (which sometimes takes a long time).

Following on from the last point, mistakes in navy blue are really hard to fix. While knitting the back of From Breton with Love I did several rows of ribbing where I had offset the stitch pattern and didn't notice until a few rows later, but as soon as I did the mistake became glaringly obvious. Dropping back to fix those mistakes would have been a lot easier in a lighter colour!

Navy blue was also the colour of my school uniform for 4 years; I am largely over that, but I know plenty of people who have never overcome their aversion to colours associated with their school days. 

But even taking these things into account, I like navy blue. It's a good dark neutral, goes with everything in my wardrobe, and isn't as harsh as black. So I'll keep on with my list of navy projects, though if you ask me again in a few months I may say that I never want to work with it again!

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