Medium thyme saves the day - maybe

With the sangria granny square bag now consigned to crochet history, when I had time to crochet, I focused my attention on a long overdue blanket for a now little girl.

I had gotten this far:

granny square baby blanket — My progress on the crochet baby blanket

when I found myself a bit stymied as to what color would come next.

I liked the way the square made me feel, but I was not clear on what direction to go for the seventh round.

While Josef Albers’ believed “In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually,” I don’t find that color is deceptive so much as it is not a fixed quantity, and how it appears to any given eye is greatly influenced by what colors are in the immediate neighborhood and how wide or narrow that swath of color is.

I knew that the seventh round would change the way I experience the square, but I liked it the way it was; still it was time to move forward.

After spending a lot of time thinking about what color should come next and holding the square up to any available bit of yarn that crossed my path, I decided to try the Red Heart Super Saver lemon.

This is, as it happens, a color I like a great deal, but which I find does not always “play nice” with other colors, and as I worked the seventh round, my doubts about the suitability of the lemon at this particular juncture increased with each stitch until the seven round was completed:

seven round granny square — A crochet granny square blanket to be

I neither liked nor disliked the result.

The square I loved was lost, but clearly this new square had potential.

Unhappy with the way the lemon seemed to overpower the sea coral of round five, I sought a solution, and while I was ready, willing, and able to frog the lemon and start over with another color, I have enough experience to know that doing so might not get me the color solution I seek, so instead, I got out some Red Heart Super Saver medium thyme to see if it could work any color magic.

In my understanding of color, a neutral is one which brings together other colors, so, in the way I view the world, hot red (as was used in this project):

the start of a hot red and scrap yarn crochet basket — Red hot yarn with various yarn scraps

is a neutral, offering a variety of colors safe haven and creating a fun and interesting piece in the process.

Likewise, I have noticed that Red Heart Super Saver medium thyme is able to perform a similar function, so I got some out of my stash and crocheted an eighth round:

eight round granny square — Eight rounds into a crochet granny square blanket

Again, the character of the square was changed completely, and while I’m not absolutely certain what I think of the direction this blanket to-be is going, I will continue the only way possible: one stitch (and one round) at a time.

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