Adding some colour: part 2

WIP: Zaire by Isager
Originally uploaded by Asplund

One more row of squares and a section of mitred striped before the shoulder join.

I'm happy with my addition of yellow and the way those stripes frame three squares.

Next there will be four squares: two light beige (looks white here) in the middle and two medium beige at the ends.

Adding some colour

WIP: Zaire by Isager
Originally uploaded by Asplund

A ball of yellow wool was practically calling me from a corner of my stash, and I couldn't resist adding it to the other colours. There will be two more mitred stripes; my plan is to make the next one yellow too to achieve a kind of frame for the next set of squares.

In addition to this modification of the stripes, I've decided to knit them garter-stitch to make them blend with the squares. The original design has stripes that consist of a combination of stocking stitch and garter stitch; I tried this first but thought enough was going on already, especially with my additions of stripes and colours, and changed it to have the same texture all over.

Surprise

WIP: Zaire by Isager
Originally uploaded by Asplund

To my surprise I've started a project that features - heavily! - no less than three knitting techniques I'm usually not attracted to:

1. Garter stitch: too monotonous to knit in my opinion.
2. Intarsia: difficult to make neat joins.
3. Entrelac: also difficult to make neat joins, and I seldom like the way the results look.

What happened? Well, in short I was looking for inspiration how to use some beautiful colours in my stash, opened Marianne Isager's Knitting out of Africa and saw her design Zaire. A perfect pattern to display colours and to see how they interact.

My choice of colours is far less dramatic than Isager's, but I've kept her arrangement of dark and light areas. I've added a horizontal zigzag line at the bottom, partly because I was getting tired of green garter-stitch knitting and wanted a change, partly simply to see how it would turn out. I rather like the way it reaches the very edge.

Now that I'm into this project I find myself more positive about the three techniques, very much thanks to how they improve each other: the colour changes make garter stitch less monotonous, and garter stitch makes the intarsia and entrelac joins neater. What's more, it keeps the entrelac from "billowing", which is what I personally don't find attractive about the technique even though I admire the skill it takes to knit it.

My first entrelac join was clumsy (between beige and green areas). It was a really good exercise for me to analyse why it turned out that way and how I could improve it, so it was worth the time it took. I rather like having to solve problems, since it makes me feel I learn new things.

The problem here seemed to be knitting not only two colours together, but also a knit and a purl stitch. Therefore, I added a beige row to the green part. Lo and behold, knitting two identical stitches (beige purls) together made quite a difference!