Affected by Color Affection

If you are a member of Ravelry and like shawls, you might be aware that one particular shawl garnered an unusual number of likes, the Color Affection shawl designed by Veera Valimaki.  My friend were discussing it in the spinning and knitting group one spring afternoon.  Thanks to her electronic gizmo, my friend Laurie could even show it to me right then and there. 

I love playing with colors and textures. Try as I might, thoughts of that shawl kept creeping into my mind.  It wasn't long before I scrolled through the project photos on the site. I saw some lovely combinations, but only one or two in my favorite colors.

I learned about the shawl before the  Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair  on the Cummington Fairgrounds.  A friend and I went there together.  It was one of the first hot days of the year.  I wore my favorite batik clothes by Global Village,  a scoop-neck top and a paneled gathered skirts in complementary fabrics in two leafy prints in purple and green (sorry, no photo). I couldn't think of anything I wanted to buy, but since I loved my purple and green batik clothing so much I thought a shawl to wear with them on chilly summer evenings would be nice. 

I walked into my friends' booth Sliver Moon. Here is the same booth at a different fair. 

I happened to find a fingering yarn in just about the exact shade of purple I wanted.  The price for the yardage was great. Because of the way Laurie hand-painted it, it shades to a pink that brings out other colors in the fabric.  Kay had the last of some green yarn she'd dyed.  I don't think I could match the green of the fabric much more closely if I tried.  There was some shading in the green yarn, too, that would echo the batik effect of my clothing.  Both women were amazed at how well the yarn looked with my clothes when they hadn't known what I was wearing that day or what the other was bringing.

I have to admit I immediately thought "Color Affection shawl."  I didn't knit it immediately though.  I lacked a third yarn to go with the yarn.  On the rich purple background of the batik print there is a tie-dye double leaf design in white, shades of green and blue. In the stall that day we all decided that blue would be the color, and a shade they didn't have that day.  I've put off buying the blue yarn because of finances.  I have the fabric that I cut off when I shortened the skirt. This past week Laurie told me to bring in a swatch so that she could dye a blue to go with it and I can knit my shawl. 

On a completely different note, the animal barn were right in the midst of the vendors.  We couldn't hear the music from the other part of the fairgrounds.  The soundtrack for the day were the various vocalizatons of the sheep and goats.  Some sounded very forlorn, some upset, others angry or insistent. At the end of the day after the public had gone, in the barn in the middle of everything it sounded like the animals were talking over the day.  One little black lamb was standing in the center of his pen and for all the world sounded like he was saying he was tired, he was hungry, he wanted his mama, he wanted his own pen and he wanted to go home!