Rowan Yarns Collections and Newsletters

Have you ever started knitting something that you thought would be a straightforward project but turned into a complex mind-changing struggle. This is happening to me right now and I don’t know if I will ever get to the end.

Out of all the new designs from Rowan Spring and Summer 2022 one caught my eye. It was this one, Eve, designed by Georgia Farrell and knitted using Kidsilk Haze and Summerlite 4ply.

Eve by Georgia Farrell

It wasn’t the colour that attracted me, as yellowy-green colours would not suit me, but the possibility of the huge number of colour combinations. My mind was a-whirr! Blues, purples and pinks mixed with shades of white. However, that was before I checked out the colour shade card for Kidsilk Haze and Summerlite 4ply. Consequently, my choice dwindled down to blue or pink with white stripes.

Please keep in mind that the colours depicted below and on computer screens may differ in reality, and it is always best to compare yarn shades with actual balls of yarn.

Before I made my final colour choices I looked at the designer’s chosen shades, Eve green and Cream in Kidsilk Haze and Seashell in Summerlite 4ply, to consider why they worked so well together.

I think it was due to the fact that Cream Kidsilk Haze and Seashell Summerlite 4ply were very similar in hue and Eve Green in Kidsilk Haze was a stronger shade but in harmony with them. With this in mind, I made some preliminary choices from my shade card and then headed off to the haberdashery department in John Lewis, Oxford Street to group balls of my chosen shades together. The shades that seemed to work well were Kidsilk Haze in White and Grace and Summerlite 4ply in Pure White.

So, the lovely people at Rowan sent me my chosen shades and I started to knit a test sample. I made this fairly large as I wanted to test it accurately. However, all was not well. – the shades appeared to change colour.

The bright white shade of Summerlite 4ply affected the appearance of the white shade of Kidsilk Haze and turned it into a pale beige shade. The same thing appeared to happen to the clean pink colour of Grace – it became a muted pink. Unfortunately, knitting these shades together was not working for me – I really do not look good in muted colours.

I decided to replace the white Kidshilk Haze with a blue Kidsilk Haze called Heavenly as I thought a blue would harmonise better with the Pure White shade of Summerlite 4ply. I had a couple of balls for a few years which were waiting to be knitted into ….. something …. well maybe this will work.

But no, it wasn’t any better. The pale pink colour of Grace and the blue colour of Heavenly that were so clean and pure in a ball of Kidsilk Haze became muted when knitted up into a transparent material.

The reason for this change in hue was due to the transparent quality of the knitted Kidsilk Haze material – it allowed the colour of my skin underneath to mix with both the pink and the blue Kidsilk Haze yarn and dulled their beautiful shades. It was as if I added a tiny blob of pale cream paint to the pink and blue dye mix. Unfortunately, this colour combination still wasn’t working for me.

I was determined to use Heavenly, the blue Kidsilk Haze shade, and went back to my shade cards and John Lewis. I decided to look at the shade Duck Egg for Summerlite 4ply and Ghost to replace the pink Kidsilk Haze. Keeping in mind that comparing the different colour balls of Kidsilk Haze did not help before, I put my fingers underneath a few strands of the yarn of each ball I had chosen. I thought these colours were less likely to affect each other and might work so I bought the shades Ghost and Duck Egg to go with Heavenly.

I have now been knitting Eve for a few weeks but I’m still not sure about the shades.

Changing the shades for this design has turned out to be extremely challenging. If I had a cupboard full of Kidsilk Haze and Summerlite 4ply in every single shade available I could have spent months finding a colour combination that I preferred. Maybe I went the wrong way choosing light shades and should have gone with darker shades. How about these combinations:

Blackcurrant and Dewberry in Kidsilk Haze and Aubergine in Summerlite 4ply