YARN Magazine

Colour: The Power and the Glory

Sally Melville (XRX)

AUD$39.95/ISBN 1933064021

What is the first thing you notice about a garment? Colour! And yet sadly, many of us lack the confidence to experiment with colour or, overwhelmed by the choices in the yarn shop, we take the safest option. And while most knitting books teach technique and/or provide patterns, they rarely discuss making colour choices.

In her book, Colour: The Power and the Glory, Sally Melville addresses this problem by giving some basic and simple rules of colour theory. She explains how our perceptions of colour can change with geography, mood and season. She discusses using a colour wheel, tonal ranges, complementary colours, analogous colours and more. All the techniques needed for multicoloured knitting and working with multicoloured yarns are explained and illustrated to give you the skills and confidence you need to explore knitting with colour, and there are more than 40 projects to try.

This book is the third in the series The Knitting Experience. The first, The Knit Stitch: Inspiration & Instruction, focused only on the knit stitch and simple designs in garter stitch. The second book, The Purl Stitch: Becoming Intuitive, by bringing in only one more stitch, introduced working in patterns, circular knitting and other techniques. Each book builds on the knitter's skills and confidence.

Proving that less is more, Sally Melville teaches simple designs as a pathway to better technique. Throughout her books she encourages the knitter to pay attention to the details. For example, there are many ways to cast on and cast off, and several ways to seam the garment. These details are almost always absent from knitting patterns, but knowing when to use them and how to assemble a garment well is crucial—even the most beautifully knitted garment can be spoilt by clumsy finishing. Melville covers these aspects of knitting thoroughly, making her books suitable for the beginner as well as the experienced knitter who will enjoy revisiting the basics and learning something new.

In all the books in the series, I have especially enjoyed Melville's 'Meditations', in which she writes about her passion for knitting and teaching, taking risks, trying something new, achieving, and her views on living. Upon reading that '...we are never too old or too experienced or too established to wonder, to learn, to enthuse, to reinvent ourselves', I felt I had found a kindred spirit.

—Philippa Olsen