Most years, I love winter.  I love curling up under a quilt with a dog or two in my lap. Wearing thick, cuddly sweaters while drinking hot cider.  Coming in from snowshoeing and toasting my backside in front of the fire. I even like shoveling snow.

This winter has been awful.  It’s been burn-your-face cold alternating with  help, I’m trapped to the hip in salty slush-sand.

Yesterday, as it rained on the nice fresh snow again, my mood went from simple “let me play with the colors of nature to find Mary Oliver’s color”  to “hey, I have an idea for a Latin American garden”  to full-on gardenfest.  Geranium pinks, hydrangea purples and blues,  emerging bulb greens.  If I can’t have fun snow, then I’m ready for Spring!

The garden skeins are fun and fairly simple to do.  The greens were layered emerald green, kelly green and a bit of turquoise blended for variation.  I laid turquoise blue, violet and pink stripes in between the green sections and let the colors bleed.  I did some skeins with the color stripes reversing (green, purple, pink, purple, green)  and some with repeats (green, blue, violet, pink, green).  I didn’t have a pattern in mind for this, so I went for a shortish repeat that would make a nice color pattern on a basic sock.

I did get a little development work done.  I don’t know where this one will end up.  It’s quiet and soft without being muted. The base is a mill spun 80% merino/ 20% camel fingering yarn with a lovely natural camel-y color.  I love working with tan bases because you just know up front it’s going to be an earthy skein.

I pressed the skein into a thin sheet and used a syringe and my fingers to paint a watercolor across the yarn canvas.

I did end up wrapping and steaming this one, but for these watercolor painted skeins, I should set up a steamer tray that will keep the canvas flat.  In this case, the color mixing worked nicely.  I used some ruby red which made a nice burgundy wine when blended.  By the square inch, this is fairly balanced across the colors, but the turquoise definitely pulls everything together and stands out.

Even accounting for wet/dry color variation, I lost much more of the color than I was expecting.  I was going for Marquez- Hundred Years of Solitude.  Instead, it’s very English garden.   Still, a good first step.  I like the English garden look, so yea for that.  Best of all, I have a much better idea of the colors and saturation required for the Marquez painting.  Now I have to figure out how get it on the yarn!