While work is keeping me extremely busy lately, I’ve still had time to obsess on color and knitting design ideas.

Two Design Tips from QueerJoe

Here are two of the many general rules I try to stick to when I’m designing something new:

1. When using Koigu’s handpainted yarns, I always try to use a slip-stitch pattern and at least two very different colorways of yarn.
2. When knitting socks with different colored heels and toes, I like my contrasting heel and toe color to be vibrant and loud…to the point of garish.

I know these are two very specific rules, but if you’re planning on designing with Koigu, or knitting socks with contrasting colored heels and/or toes, it might come in handy, no?

I discovered the first rule when I was designing my first Koigu Cross Stitch Scarf years ago.   I found this stitch pattern that I thought would work great for a scarf, and was too lazy to get up to find to “matching” skeins of Koigu and ending up using two colors that I KNEW would look terrible together (one was pastel-ly with lots of grays and the other was bright an purply/red).  What I found was that the mixing of the stitch pattern melded these two disparate colorways in beautiful ways, and whenever I tried to find matching yarns to make this scarf, the result was much more boring.

Similarly with sock heels and toes, I find loud contrasting colors work very well to show off the subtleness of the sock yarns I use.  Plus, even if it’s a complete mistake (which it never has been for me) hardly anyone ever gets to see the toes and heels of my socks when I’m wearing them.

Current Knitting

I found another stitch pattern that I thought would work really well with multiple colors of Koigu, but I think I’m quite wrong.

Since I wasn’t sure, I decide to knit up a small girl’s top and use that as my test swatch.  I’m going to finish the garment, but I don’t think it’s going to turn out how I envisioned it.

I also bought some new sock yarn that I’ll use as the heel and toe yarn for every sock I knit until I run out of this stuff.

This is Hot Socks Neon yarn and it’s a wool/nylon blend.  Can’t wait to start my next pair of socks.