Selecting shades: the Kate D colourway

Are you someone who finds putting colours together tricky? Well, in this post, I’m going to tell you exactly how I went about selecting shades for my Tonnach cardigan. I should perhaps point out, though, before I begin, that the colourway for my cardigan has proved so popular with you that we have actually sold out of one of our key shades of Milarrochy Tweed: Hirst

We have this shade on a large back order from the mill in Donegal, but unfortunately it won’t reach our warehouse before August (because the mill runs a strict dyeing cycle to ensure that paler shades are not contaminated by darker ones). Producing yarn takes time, and however much one plans ahead (which we of course do) things can sometimes take you by surprise – such as the popularity of a particular colourway for a summer KAL resulting in unexpected numbers of kit sales. So I should say, up front, that if you wish to knit my colourway, you’ll have to make a substitution: either replacing the number of Hirst balls required with an alternative shade of Milarrochy Tweed, substituting a different yarn just for the Hirst component, or choosing a different yarn for the garment in its entirety.

In my colourway, Hirst is the infrequently used “pop” colour of the palette. You only need one or two 25g balls to knit in any size, and if you are knitting one of the smaller sizes, and have a ball of Hirst left over from another KDD project, you are likely to have enough. It would also be perfectly fine to combine the other Milarrochy Tweed colours in the kit (of which we have plenty in stock and which you can buy in the shop as single balls) with one of the “natural” shades of another yarn brand such as John Arbon’s Devon 4 ply (available in 25g mini skeins), Studio Donegal’s 4 ply Darnie (a Donegal yarn with a slightly different structure and composition to Milarrochy Tweed) or Jamieson & Smith’s 2 ply Shetland jumper weight (which is similarly light and airy). My apologies for this situation, which I know many of you may find frustrating, but I hope you understand.

All that said, I’m genuinely very glad that so many of you seem so keen on knitting this colourway, especially as I designed it as a kind of showcase for one of my favourite shades in the Milarrochy Tweed palette: the glorious Snapdragon red.

Snapdragon is used for all the ribs and is hence the cardigan’s framing or defining shade. I chose it because I just love it, as well as the fact that a saturated red works really well to enliven the palette of my summer wardrobe, which tends generally towards the blue and / or buff. So if you find yourself at a loss as to where to begin when choosing shades for your Tonnach, why not look at what you want to wear with your cardigan, and select a colour for the rib that works with your own wardrobe or accessories?

There are five shades in the Tonnach palette, with the lettered designations A, B, C, D and E. So once I’d chosen my framing “A” shade (Snapdragon) I went on to choose my “D”. Why “D”next? Because of the way the chart sequence is structured, I knew that the “D” shade would “read” visually as an opposing stripe or band to “A”. So to highlight this oppositional effect, I chose a shade D that not only has high contrast, but high complementarity with shade A: Eyebright

If Snapdragon is a deep, warm red, then Eyebright is the palest of pale blues whose turquoise neps only enhance its glacial coolness. This combination of a pale, turquoise-y blue and a bright, bold red is one of my all-time chromatic favourites. I mentioned it in this post, and you can also see it at work here, in my styling for the Elizabeth Montagu stockings.

In the case of Tonnach, I wanted to use Eyebright with Snapdragon to really highlight the contrasting zig-zagging stripes in the shade sequence. And so, with my A and D selected, I then chose two muted “companion” colours for shades C and E: in this case, Hare (a quiet fawn), and Ardlui (a gorgeous dull grey-blue). Finally, I lifted the middle of each zig-zag with a shade B “pop”, selecting the pesky but always useful Hirst for this purpose.

This is my final shade selection.

I use Adobe Illustrator to draft my palettes. If you use this or another kind of chart-building software package (there are many available), you might like to do what I do, and zoom out to get a good look at the palette as a whole:

Zooming out allows you to get a good sense of how the palette will “read” visually from a distance. A similar effect can be achieved by knitting a good-sized swatch, and using a reducing glass (a sort of reverse magnifying glass deployed by quilters when checking and arranging their fabric blocks). Alternatively, take a photo of your swatch, tesselate it over a large area, and then zoom right out and / or squint at the resut. What you are essentially trying to do with all of this zooming business is to “see” the fabric of your cardigan before you’ve knitted it, and picture what your chosen shades will look like. “Zooming out” allows you to get a better sense of how all your colours work together, as well as the palette as a whole.

When we “zoom out” on my finished cardigan, you can see how, from a distance, the contrasting stripes of Snapdragon and Eyebright (shades A and D) are what’s most apparent. The muted hues of Ardlui and Hare (C and E) recede a wee bit, while the Hirst pop (shade B) still pops out.

And if we zoom out further still, you can see how, from a distance, I appear to be wearing a cardigan composed simply of stripes of deep red and pale blue.

So, to summarise, here’s how I went about putting together my palette for my Tonnach:

1. Choose a shade A “frame”. Think about how the ribbed edges define a cardigan, and consider how the colour you use here will work with your existing wardrobe.

2. Choose a shade D contrast. Shade D will “read” against shade A from a distance, so you might like to pick a colour with high contrast or complementarity with the one you are using as your “frame” to really accentuate those zig-zags.

3. Choose C and E “companion” colours You can achieve many different effects with your companions, using different shades with higher or lower contrast, or selecting two different blues, browns or greens. I think that the companion colours play a really important role in the Tonnach palette’s overall “feeling”, and in my case, I think their muted tone is what gives this cardigan its old-fashioned, vintage feel.

4. Choose a shade B “pop” This shade is used to highlight the centre of each zig-zag, and just like when you are designing a Fairisle motif with several different colours, it’s useful for that central row to stand out.

5. Zoom out check how your shades work together, and the visual effect of your palette overall by zooming out (using a reducing glass, charting software, or by photographing your swatch)

I’m setting out these five steps for you simply as a guide to what I did: an approach which might help you if you are a knitter who feels at a loss when choosing colours. This is not any sort of programme or definitive chromatic plan, and I genuinely feel that, when it comes to colour and palette, there is no “right” way and definitely no “wrong”. Where colour is concerned, we really are all individuals, as you’ll see tomorrow when I return to tell you about the different approaches taken by my KDD colleagues when selecting their shades, and putting them together into a palette for their Tonnachs.

Happy shade selecting! And remember: if you’d like to knit the colourway I’m wearing, you can buy individual balls of Milarrochy Tweed for shades A, C, D and E and simply add your preferred Hirst substitute for shade B.

If you want to join our Tonnach KAL, all you need is a copy of the pattern and some yarn. Some beautiful swatches are beginning to appear over in the KDD Ravelry group, so if you feel in need of some more colour inspiration, do hop over to have a look.