Contemplating Brown

I did knit other things while on the way to the lovely Heaven shawl and I thought about knitting many more other things.

I can tell you that all this thinking has produced something brown. It doesn't look like much yet, but I sure am contemplating brown. It is a study in brown. What an unusual colour brown is, that plain ordinary brown. If brown was a box of crayons, brown would be the colour you use for puppies, soil and tree trunks. Not that any of these things come in the shade of crayon box brown, but it is what you use brown for.

In a yarn store, brown is one of those colours that you talk about in terms of shades of brown. Red brown, violet brown, soft brown, warm brown, rich brown, charcoal brown. You seldom hear 'its brown' because there isn't a lot of yarn that is just plain brown.

So I am not sure what you would call the brown of Lang Zoom. It's an unusual yarn. It is airy and light, and it almost feels it isn't running through your hands, and then you look, and yup, that mildly felted little strand is running through you fingers and yes, all your knitting is adding to the sweater, and not just slipping into thin air.

But trying to quantify this colour of brown is something else. It isn't a heathered brown at all. It is a haze of brown, just a skiff of brown over the top, a light dusting of brown over a soft core. It is almost ghostly, but ghostly implies gray. This clearly isn't gray. It is brown.

This is a character brown. Not brash or harsh or severe. It is a brown that cuddles up alongside you and sneaks right in to to sit a spell beside you.

If a sweater ought to be warmth and comfort and a hug, this sort of sit for a spell brown is just right for it.