As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am involved in a granny square swap we call the sisterhood of colors.

The guidelines are simple. Make a twelve-inch granny square using bright colors and black.

And as I also mentioned earlier, this is a bit of a stretch for me. Black is, according to this wikipedia entry, what happens when an object does not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum. Color wrangling with what is, to my mind, a non-color requires me to try new things.

As Josef Albers noted, “color deceives continually,” and I ran up against this first hand in working on the second square of this swap.

One of my favorite artists is Mondrian, and among his works, one of my favorite pieces is one titled Broadway Boogie Woogie, seen here:

Mondrian had much interest in and spent a great deal of his artistic life experimenting with the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow, so I decided to do the same, and got out my trusty 5.0mm Etimo hook, and four skeins of Red Heart Super Saver yarn in Black, Hot Red, Bright Yellow, and Blue.

Always trying to impose order on an unruly world, I came up with a pattern that I was determined to follow. This was difficult for me as there were several times where I had finished a round and absolutely hated what I had done. But Josef Albers was right about the deceptive nature of color, and what I learned is that until you finish the last round of a granny square, you don’t really know what it will look like. Here is how my Mondrian inspired granny square looked after all the rounds were completed and the last end was woven in:

One thing I am beginning to truly appreciate about the swap is the limits it places on me. They are not the limits I would choose, and it requires me to experiment and try things that I otherwise would not, and in this instance, I think it was to my benefit to try something new.