Playing with colours

I have a wild sort of flower garden. It's on a steep slope and over time, it just happened. There are wild things among the planned perrenials, and it is a riot of colours in high summer with chartreuse, hot cerise pinks, clear oranges and deep reds among the purples and many many shades of green.

Yesterday was like that. It was an accidental colour mix, that somehow, is ok. I separated some of the Old Rose coloured yarn dyed last week, and set some aside. Part of this weeks goal was overdying sections, and seeing if I could match a particular series of fall tones that rose bush leaves turn in the fall.

Since part of the goal was to preserve some of the old rose, I decided to dip dye sections. Section 1 was a rich red orange, much like fruit of a blood orange . On the skein after the dyeing process, the resulting shade was a really nice peachy colour that blended perfectly with the old rose. Section 2 was dyed with a lighter shade of the orange red. This second shade turned out to be a problem. It turned out a brilliant yellow akin to the yellow on the walls of my study. It was absolutely wrong for the soft tones of the peach and old rose.

I decided to try over dyeing the yellow section again. The result was a wonderful shade, an earthy rusty red which I immediately fell in love with.
It was the perfect match for the soft peach. Not so the old rose.The old rose speaks of delicacy and softness. The rusty red and it coordinating peach spoke of mother natures delights. The rose colour was OK, just not quite rich enough.

At this stage in the game, I felt it was not going to get worse if I tried to do something about it. This time, the goal was to make the rose more intense, something that would meet the values I ended up with in the rust, something richer, and deeper. Rather than a deeper more intense rose, I got fuchsia.

OK, this was not happening according to plan. After a thorough wash, it went out to dry. This morning, I had to get rid of the evidence. I twisted it up into a hank and somehow, it did not hurt my eyes as much. It was put down in the 'other' yarn basket, a mix of scraps and pieces, and leftover bits. My eyes just kept going back to it.

I kind of like it. It reminds me of my flower gardens, all mixed up with unexpected vibrancies. Or of this native lady slipper.

If mother nature can do this combination, maybe I can too. I think I'll knit up a swatch of this, just to see what happens.