Gifted Gigantic Expectation

After my torturous day of cleaning, organizing, painting and decorating on Monday, I decided to relax yesterday, totally relax. The Gray was working at home and I ensconced myself in the Parlor with my favorite CDs and a cheerful fire, lots of light and a little knitting project: another One of Susanna's 2/3 Sachet bags.

You may recognize the yarn as some I hand-dyed last week. I used the 50/50 wool/silk Henry's Attic and a 2.5mm needle for the bag with size 8 beads. The "ribbon" is the 10/2 silk that I had dyed in the same batch, twisted into a cord and tied in a double bow. I mistakenly left off the first two picots on one side. I pondered whether the Cookie Rule should apply.

Whenever my family baked cookies as gifts for others or to be taken to an event such as a party or potluck, we observed the Cookie Rule-- if a cookie broke, then we got to eat it. Of course, we were strictly observed so that we did not break cookies on purpose.

Upon reflection, I decided that the missing picots were not overly obvious; that the recipient might just consider this evidence that the gift is handmade; that the bag would probably not taste very good anyway and might play havoc with my digestive system.

While K.D. Lang crooned "Black Coffee" like a liquid saxophone I was knitting the garter stitch sachet and letting my mind wander. It only took me 3 hours from start to finish, and I was thinking about making more, in successively smaller sizes. Since the item is called the 2/3 Sachet, I considered knitting the One-Off of Susanna's 2/3 of the 2/3 Sachet-- which would, according to my calculations, be the 4/9 Sachet. After that, the 8/27 Sachet, the 16/81 Sachet and so forth. I got sidetracked by untangling the silk and rewinding it, though, so never got past the initial sachet.

While untangling silk, the Glitchbrain started thinking of what this color should be named. Names like Merlot, Elderberry, Pink Blood, Garnet or Raspberry were too mundane, and meant nothing. Have any of you ever seen an Elderberry? And Garnets vary widely in color. No, there has to be a better way to name colors.

I considered numbers and letters which might signify proportions, but that didn't melt my butter. Dyslexics might confuse T10M90 with T90M10, which are two very different colors.

Dark, light, medium, very light, ultra light-- all subjective. If we're going to be subjective we might as well be uniquely subjective, right? I'm still working on my system, but it will deal with ranges of types of adjectives. For example, there are adjectives that describe quality, size, mood, etc. that could be used for the ranges of hue, value, shade and tint. Shades, which are hues (colors) with varying degrees of black added, could be described in terms of good and evil. Black = Evil, 90% Black = Rotten. 80% Black = Bad, 70% Black = Unethical, 20% Black = Misled, 0% Black = Good. See?

I still have a lot of work to do on this system. I envision the end result giving colors like Misled Jagged Hope. What color is that? Who knows, but it gives you just as many clues as half the colors of Rowan's 4-ply Yorkshire Tweed, right!? And the Glitchbrain will at least provide a Key to Understanding.

Maybe I'll knit another sachet today, and try to pin down the system.

Posted by Sheila at November 17, 2004 07:36 AM Posted to | TrackBack