Of Grannies and Ripples and Wrestling Color ino Submission!

I had a major setback on my blue and grey ripple afghan yesterday. I started looking around online to see about buying more yarn for the project, and I discovered that Simply Soft Fisherman has been discontinued. I guess I shouldn't have started that afghan so impulsively! I considered putting out an SOS to every group I belong to on the web, but that seemed like a lot of work with no guarantee of success.

Then I had an idea - if I can't ripple, then I can granny! I can use the white sparingly, for just the first round of each granny square, and one skein should do me. When I got home from work last night, I worked up a square (astounding my DH with my speed!), and I have to say that I like it even better than the ripple. And if I run out of off white yarn, I can always make a few squares with a different color center. So I am off and running on a granny square afghan now!

Now, back to my discussion of Sanford's Manual of Color. I said yesterday that we would look at brightening and subduing colors today. According to the manual, the best way to brighten a color is to juxtapose it with its complementary color. Apparently, the eye adds the complementary color itself anyway, so seeing the two colors together heightens that effect. However, when complementary colors are mixed, they effectively subdue each other to the point of drabness.

Now, unless we are hand dying our own yarns, we are not going to be able to subdue color by mixing. However, the book goes on to make an interesting point. If you use shades of a single color, the eye will mix in the complement itself, thereby subduing the effect you were trying to achieve. So Sanford recommends always including just a little bit of the complementary color along with the shades of the original color in order to achieve the desired effect.

If I have time this weekend, I will try to make some granny squares that test out some of these color theories. Tomorrow - the impact of white and black on color harmony.