This is how it looks in the morning when I come into work. It has been very dark but now you can see just a little bit of light is starting to show. The sun is just barely beginning to peek in from the eastern plains.  This is the first glimpse that Spring is on the way and it brightens my day. I look forward to the Spring and Summer and coming into work when it is actually light out. This is the 16th street mall looking towards the Capitol building.  I do like it that they left the Christmas lights in the trees. It is so pretty.

I can’t believe another week has gone by and it is February  already. There are not enough hours in a day, a week, a month to cover everything I need or want to accomplish. I have some catching up to do so I will first focus on the fun weekend I had last weekend, when it was still January!

Blogless Christie, Cat and I went on a road trip to Colorful Yarns in Centennial. We met in Arvada, stopped for coffee and snacks, healthy ones of course, this little place by the coffee shop had some dates and corn chips with flax seeds. Maybe those sound strange but they were really good! After we stocked up, we took to the road. Cat drove and drove and drove, until we figured out we probably missed a turn off somewhere. We ended up on County Line Road and then took a few side streets, back tracking a bit until we found Colorful Yarns.  It is the cutest little yarn store.

What they have that we were most looking for was knitting bags by Offhand Designs. Cat found the perfect one for her. I found the perfect one for me. Then I found a sheep mug, Llama stitch markers among a few other small items things.  Stacey from Sheep in The City was there and was most helpful. We also met up with Nachaele and blogless Margie from Colorado Springs. After I did some damage to my pocketbook we hung around and knit for a while. We then went to Olive Garden for soup, salad, bread-sticks and wine.

 When it was time to head for home we piled in Cat’s car, with all of our new acquisitions from Colorful. It was a great day. Then Cat drove and drove and drove. We took the back way back to Chritie’s house in Arvada and after a few little side trips and missed turns we were back in Arvada all safe and sound. I was doing just fine, side trips and getting lost does not bother me one bit. After all, I am a knitter and that is just more knitting for me, the passenger. I am sorry you didn’t get to knit in the car Cat, but thank you for driving.

I am styling in downtown Denver with my new Offhand Designs knitting bag. I am so color coordinated, even down to the underwear. Trust me on this one! Thank you Kathy for pointing this out to EVERYONE!

A while back I decided to have my colors done by a color professional. Cynthia is a color image consultant, one of the best in the business. She went through over 2200 colors to pick out my very best colors. Knowing what my best colors are has helped me in making better choices for buying yarn and planning knitting projects in addition to assisting me in buying wardrobe items and in wearing the right color of makeup. The sessions with Cynthia helped me tremendously.

Getting my colors done was a good investment. I have saved money on yarn and clothes purchases because I am now armed with the information I need to make the best choices for myself. I can confidently choose the best style to knit or wear and the best colors to buy or knit it with. I can easily say no if it is not my color or style. I have enjoyed my knitting more and I am free to not work on projects that are not right for me. I love to knit with my colors, it makes me happy!

The only thing that did not make me happy at the time I got my colors done was to find out that I did not have purple in my pallet. I have always loved the color purple but I ended up with only one row of a reddish pinkish purple. I do not have lavender or deep purple or anything in between in my personal color pallet. I thought this was a complete mistake. How could the Purple Princess not have a wand full of purple? That was a hard slap (as opposed to a soft slap??) in the face at the time. I had to get over that a bit and now it is okay. I decided I could still enjoy looking at purple I just shouldn’t wear it or knit with it. 

Then I found that I had quite a bit of purple yarn in my stash. Okay, it was in my stash. In my stash for a very long time. As I pondered on this fact I came to the realization that it was in my stash for a reason. I really did not like to knit with purple. I admint it, Purple is truly not my best color. I was able to trade some of it out for better colors of yarn and some I gave away. Now, I feel much differently about my stash and I am looking forward to knitting many more items from my current stash, of no purple. One example is, I had a lot of purple and lavender Black Water Abbey yarn that I was able to trade for colors that are in my pallet. I am currently knitting with the BWA Sky color and loving it. I am planning to start the Vickie cardigan with the Chestnut or the Peat color BWA and I am excited about it. I love those colors and they are in my color pallet. When I had all that purple in my stash I never knit it and I never really put it in the plan to knit with either. I just kept it there to look at it, I guess but yarn doesn’t  do me much good if I don’t want to knit with it. 

Since then, I have been on a search to find some yarn that is my color purple. My purple  is a very red purple, it may even be considered fuchsia. It is a little hard to match but after all I am the Purple Princess. I must knit up something with purple.

Then I saw this …..

At the Loopy Ewe. It is Dream in Color Smooshy in a color called Punky Fuchsia. Could it be? Is it my color. Is it the only “purple” color in my pallet? Dare I take a chance and order it? Colors on the internet can be different in person. After mulling this over a while, but not too long as things go fast at The Loopy Ewe, I was intrigued enough and had to find out. I ordered.

I received this …..

 Could it possibly the long searched for perfect shade of purple …..

Why yes it is my shade of Purple and it totally ROCKS!

Yep, perfect even in different light. Woohoo!  

I have three skeins. Enough to make this …..

http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter07/PATTjeanie.html

I am only thinking about it so I am totally open to suggestions if you would like to leave me some. I am the Purple Princess and I must make something fabulous with the only yarn I have found that is my exact shade of purple.

I hope you like it. Please let me know and come on back anytime. I will be posting here from now on.

I am sure you remember this…

I started my Shapely Beaded Shawlette by Judy Pascale in both the pink and the teal/gray/offwhite (called He’s a Pirate) both dyed by my friend Mary Kay . I used some very pretty shiny white beads. I ended up liking the teal with white bead the best so I went off on my merry way, knitting away. This is a great pattern and is really fun to knit.

Then, I went to finish my color training with Cynthia at her Color Quest  studio. I was accompanied by Judy( Fiber Experiences), Kathy(Mountain Purl), Christie and Theresa (both blogless). It was much fun. However, I brought both the pink and the teal starts of the shawlette and the pink is definitely not my color (just what I though) but surprisingly the teal with white beads is way to “cool” for me. (more about that later, I still have a lot to digest about colors, cool, warm, right, wrong, texture, contrast, radient, energized) Cynthia is really good but it really cut deep when she didn’t think my yarn or the beads were right for me. I was so proud of my choices. The rest of day spent with friends was very fun as we all had lunch with margeritas afterwards.

Later, that evening, after thinking long and hard I decided to rip what I had done on the shawl that was just too “cool” for me. I decided I would ust use different beads with the teal yarn, you know to warm it up a bit. In my mind that would work and it would then be just right. Slightly warm, my colors, energizing and radient. My shawl now looks like this again.

Warm and bronze. The beads came right away so I happily started my shawl again and again and again and darned if it didn’t look like crap. So after several tries to make this combo work and make progress on the shawl I gave it up. You know when you keep having to start a project over and over you know something just ain’t right about it. I really tried to make it work, really I did. I got nowhere and I got nothing. Knitting sucks sometimes but for some strange reason I love it and I keep going.

After all that I still want to make me another beaded shawlette so I ordered this yarn.

A nice slighty warm copper Koigu (KPM) in color 1115. I think this will go wonderfully with the bronze hex beads, as soon as the yarn comes in that is. I am impatiently awaiting its arrival. Stay tuned, maybe this project will take shape one day soon!