Thursday, May 10, 2007

Seeing pink

First, a disclaimer: I hate pink and I have always hated pink. Even as a child, I wouldn't have been caught dead wearing pink. It's okay in a rose or a tulip, but not on me. And, having had two sons, it was never an issue in terms of clothing in this household.

I recently encountered a skein of beautiful, soft merino sock yarn from Interlacements that someone had given me. It has a variety of intense colors, including dark blue, green, purple, orange, brown, and.... shocking pink. (Okay, the pink was there, but it looks nice as an accent among other colors.) It seemed too pretty to waste on socks and the 500-yard skein enough to make a baby sweater. I found a pattern for a V-neck pullover that seemed perfect, and the knitting began. And then it happened – as the sweater got bigger, the pink began to take over. I took an informal survey and asked 7 women if they would put this sweater on a boy, and 5 said "yes, it's beautiful;" one said "no way!"; and one said that her daughter would put it on a boy but her daughter-in-law wouldn't. So, given that the Baby in Question lives 7,000 miles away, and his mother's taste is really an unknown, and the yarn is too expensive to be stuck in a drawer and never worn, it is, sadly, on its way to the frog pond.

Plan B is the Quiz pullover from Mission Falls 1824 cotton. But instead of black and white, I decided to do it in red and black. Ordering yarn over the internet is always dangerous, and I should have learned my lesson a long time ago, but since there is no LYS near by, it is pretty hard to avoid it. The color I ordered was called "cardinal," and it looked red on my monitor, but the yarn that appeared looks more like a coral than a true red. Okay, coral is sort of orange, and that should be okay for a boy. So I started knitting. And something very funny happened. The "cardinal" started getting pinker and pinker. So now it isn't clear what to do. Maybe the lesson is to stick to Boring Blue for boys.

2 comments:

knititch said...

oh you asked which pattern i used for the green sweater i posted on zimmermaniacs along with the fair isle. it is the february sweater from knitter's almanac. very satisfying pattern to knit. and fast.
thanks for your kind comment too.
nice work you are doing here as well.

knititch said...

oh and why not use cream, latte and browns for boys, and for girls. i made a brown tomten sweater and i think it looks very cute even for a little girl. their skin is so fair, little babies, and that makes brown look very well on them. and white.