Very Little Knowledge: On Color or Anything Else

Kettle-dyed yarn can be great for beginners, who enjoy looking at the changing colors and can more easily differentiate among stitches in variegated yarn.

My dears, I have been trying to write a post on how knitters struggle with color for about a month. I write and write and write, and then decide the whole thing has gotten out of control, and start a new post, with a new angle, and write and write and write, and then decide THAT post is also out of control, and…

We’re talking hours of my life I will never get back.

I am coming to the conclusion that this post is just not meant to be written by me. It’s not that I don’t have the knowledge, or the experience. It’s just that I don’t have anything to add to the conversation about color, and also I have generally learned my lessons about color after making ridiculous mistakes about it, and also I feel like I might be losing my mind.

That last bit has nothing to do with color or even knitting in general. It’s just that being in England is making my head spin. Mr. Trask and I have planned this move for the past two years, and yet it never quite seemed real. Now, it is real, and that is both wonderful and weird. We are still turning to each other from time to time and saying, “We live here?” Please don’t think I’m not grateful to be here, because I am. It’s just an odd feeling: everything is a little bit difficult. It’s much harder to get a bank account or a cell phone contract here than in the States – and we still don’t have any furniture – and meanwhile lots of boxes of books are arriving – all that jazz. Meanwhile, many points of reference that I had taken for granted are suddenly not there.

Here's an ugly rug I knit a long time ago.

Just to pick an example out of the air, think of when you go to the yarn shop. Picture, say, the biggest yarn shop in the world, with all the brands of yarn all laid out. There’s Red Heart, there’s Malabrigo, there’s Debbie Bliss, there’s Miss Babs. Now, when you see Red Heart, you know it’s going to be reasonably priced, even cheap. When you see Malabrigo, you know it’s going to be wooly and soft, and much more expensive. When you see Debbie Bliss, you know it’s going to be somewhere in between the two, but a good choice for lots of projects. When you see Miss Babs, you know it’s hand painted and made by a small woman-owned company. Right?

You have all that information just in your brain, because you have been surrounded with this information on knitting for years. Now, if you’ve ever trued to buy yarn in another country, think of what it was like try to figure out what was what. Of course, with yarn, you have some background information: you can look on the label, you can feel the yarn, you can smell it, etc. It takes a little more time, but it’s interesting and fun, because yarn is something in which you are interested and probably an accidental expert. [Plus, there are such things as international yarn companies, so you’ll recognize some of the yarn, but you were probably shopping for something new you could try, right?]

And here's an ugly blanket...

The problem with moving to another country is that you have to go through that process with everything: dish detergent, clothing, restaurants, television shows. There are some familiar brands, touchstones of a sort, but lots and lots of the things around us are entirely new. [Meanwhile, as mentioned before, our house is entirely empty, so we keep having to go through this process for every little thing.]

Also, not to go off on a rant (too late), think of the cleaning supplies aisle in the grocery store. There are all different kinds of cleaners there, for all different purposes. Your eye sorts these by brand and logo at first, because you know in the back of your head that Cascade is usually dishwasher soap while Palmolive is diswashing liquid. If you don’t have that easy sort function installed in your head yet, there’s just a lot more noise that you have to interpret.

So…all of this has made me feel the littlest bit like I know nothing. This is one of the reasons people decide to live abroad for a while: having this experience is like hitting “reset” on your brain and realizing assumptions you were making that you never would have noticed. It’s absolutely good for me to live in a place where I don’t know which clothing shop is the “cool for thirty-somethings” one, because it frees me to just buy what I like. Ditto for restaurants and everything else. However, at this point I am tired and a little bit scared that I won’t figure all of this out. Of course, I will; this is just a part of culture shock. [Imagine what it would be like if I were living somewhere further away, or somewhere that required me to speak a different language! What a wimp I am.]

And, really, I wanted to move here – I am loving this city – this is what some might call a luxury problem. I’m going to be fine, so why am I complaining?

And here is a sweater I knit that, when I showed it to a friend, she said, "Wow, it was really brave of you to pick that color."

Anyway, the point is that I think trying to write the post about color is one too many things on my plate. Instead, I’m thinking that I’ll give you a few thoughts about color in a series of posts, so that I don’t have to try to pull my thoughts together into something more coherent. So here are a few things:

• First reason I should not write about color for you guys: One of my favorite outfits when I was in high school was a pair of orange climbing pants and a purple sweatshirt.
• Second reason: When I started writing fiction, the very first story I wrote was about a woman trying to describe color to a woman who had been born blind.
• Secret about me: I think beginning knitters should be given variegated yarn. Based on the beginners’ classes I’ve taught, this seems to help them distinguish one stitch from another, and it helps them talk about knitting (“so I pull the green over the red?”), and it’s fun to watch the colors change.
• Another secret: I have knit, not just one, not just two, but four hideous blankets due to poor color combinations.

So, you people tell me your color secrets, or theories, or fears, and I’ll respond and sympathize! And, hey, if anyone knows where I might find gluten-free granola in England…