Color

Sorry to have been silent. After a month of much travel and more than a little work, my body rebelled and collapsed. So I've kept still. Keeping still is, I have learned, the surest cure for whatever ails me.

It's sad that stillness is so out of fashion these days. Exhausted is where it's at. The way some ancient cultures made a personal display of their material wealth, today we're expected to festoon ourselves with anxiety brought on by careers, children, politics. I was privy to a conversation recently in which someone said he didn't trust anybody who looked relaxed in this day and age, because that person was clearly out of touch with the world.

So be it. I spent the first three decades of my life struggling to be a serious, engaged person. It was highly unpleasant, both for me and for those who had to deal with me. I endeavor daily to become less mature.

You can see some of it in how I dress.

I spent my college years and quite a bit of time after living in Boston, land of earth tones. I will never forget the first time I strolled through the Back Bay wearing my first biker jacket. People stared. People pointed–and not out of admiration. It was then that I realized I was not, and was never going to be, a real Bostonian. It only took me eleven years. I'm often slow on the uptake.

Chicago is a great deal less concerned with how one dresses, which has allowed me gradually to reclaim the things I set aside when I went to college. Color is chief among them.

Not that I walk around Lakeview in a purple beret and a pink ascot. One has one's limits, and you can't undo the habits of a decade in an eyeblink. I have fifteen identical plain, black t-shirts in the closet. But more and more stuff is turning up like the green socks. Oh, those green socks. They truly were buds heralding the arrival of spring. In my case, a long overdue spring.

Still, when Beth Casey of Lorna's Laces suggested that I be part of her new "Color Commentary" series, I had to laugh. "Color Commentary" is a line of colorways designed by and named for bloggers. I'm in high company. Grumperina was first, and coming down the pike for the next several months will be many others, all far more notable than I.

My first thought was that five shades of black would not make for a particularly fun skein, except perhaps among the Goth Knit set–and I wouldn't want Zabet and friends to think I'm trying to muscle in on their territory.

I looked around the apartment and through my "design morgue" of inspiring stuff (postcards, magazine clippings, etcetera) and realized that William Morris's palette is the one that really makes my head spin. On the outside, I'm wearing black; but in my heart I truly am a greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery sort of fellow.

So after much fooling about in the dye pots Beth took my favorite Morris wallpaper, Pimpernel,



and arranged the key tones into a colorway that works in Lorna's Laces skein.

Ladies and gents, for your consideration I present "Franklin's Panopticon."



Ahem. Sorry about that. Her modeling gig was part of the deal.

Another, less exuberant view:



I'm in the midst of knitting a small garment for a small person with two skeins of the Shepherd Worsted, and so far I like the way the colors play together in stockinette.



You can get it in sock, worsted and lace weights from Lorna's Laces retailers both traditional and online. I'll show you soon what I'm making out of the dreamy Shepherd Worsted.

Once I dreamed of being a playwright and having a theater named after me. Instead I became a knitter and there's a colorway named after me.

This is better.