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You are here: Home / All blog posts / Pondering colors
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February 18, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Pondering colors

I picked out a set of colors for the tiger-eye yardage today:

1st attempt at colors for tiger eye yardage
1st attempt at colors for tiger eye yardage

I was all set to use them, and then I decided to run a simulation in Photoshop.  I’m glad I did, because this looks NOTHING like what I had in mind:

color simulation, 1st set of colors
color simulation, 1st set of colors

Mind you, it’s not unattractive, just not what I was envisioning.  I wanted a cool, restful look in warm golds, beiges, and browns, and the orange “punches up” the excitement level too much.

What I am looking for is more like my first simulation:

original simulation
original simulation

So I took the core colors of the color gradients and put them into a “swatch” image:

tiger eye color swatches
tiger eye color swatches

Now, of course, I’m stuck.  Color matching yarn to a monitor color is tricky to impossible, and my printer mangles colors, so I’m not quite sure how to get from A to B.  Obviously it doesn’t have to be a perfect color match, but I’d like it to be close enough to get a similar effect.  I am definitely going to have to dye sample skeins for this one!  I have a few of the shades in my “library”, but not all.

Which means hauling out the pH meter and my sample skeins, syringes, etc.  Just as well – I could use a refresher on precision dyeing.  It’s been a couple months since the dye study group, and I want to make sure I don’t get rusty.

Plans for this weekend:

  • farmer’s market Saturday morning
  • run up to Sharon’s on Saturday afternoon for final fitting, interfacing evaluation
  • Stitches West (a knitting convention, but might have interesting yarns) Sunday AM with friends
  • Sunday PM – dye samples for tiger eye yardage, devise drafts for testing CompuDobby IV upgrade
  • Monday – drive up to AVL (7 hour round trip), test loom, hopefully take it home!

Yep, looks like a packed weekend.

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Filed Under: All blog posts, dyeing, textiles, weaving Tagged With: painted warp, tiger eye

Previous post: Another week, another warp
Next post: Ready to start the Real Thing!

Comments

  1. Sharon says

    February 19, 2011 at 5:45 am

    It’s just me, but I like the one with orange and copper better.

  2. terri says

    February 21, 2011 at 3:08 pm

    did you find anything interesting at stitches west? i saw the gold threads/ yarns at John Marshall’s booth and thought of you.

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