Projects
The Last Chocolates in the Box
Dear Kay,
I could use a little advice.
I started this Chevron Hand Towel thinking, hey! Fun! This is when I’m going to gather up all 20 shades of those Euroflax Mini Skeins and just knit ’til there’s nothing left to knit. It’ll be a giant, long hand towel, what some people might call a “scarf.”
I’ve been knitting on this thing constantly, with a fair amount of joy, loving the six rows of garter stitch that arrive just when I’ve had enough SSK/k2tog action.
I love the chevrons.
I love the crunchy way the linen looks when knitted up.
I love the anticipation of a color change—when should I stop this one? What’s next? This is the stuff of great drama, y’all. I got mint in there. Do you know how hard it was to deal with mint?
It was all color wheels and rainbows. Until.
The weirdies.
A pink we’re going to call Bubble Yum. A neon green we’re going to call Neon Green. And white. Pure, stark, unapologetic White.
Like most overly and pointlessly ambitious schemes, this one started out strong, arrived at the middle with some momentum, and now, 17 colors into it, has hit a cement retaining wall.
I’ve tried at every juncture in this exercise in randomness to wedge these colors in. I thought, along the way, that I could make it all work if I asked myself, at each color change, “How about Neon Green?” “How about Bubble Yum?” “Time for White?” Surely at some point, there would be an opening.
No such luck.
The answer was never “Sure, come on in.” It was always, “You’re harshing my mellow. You’re too much. You keep interrupting. Stop with the selfies!”
The completion junkie in me is fighting hard. You can’t have a 20-color Euroflax Mini Skein scarf using only 17 colors. It’s lame! It’s a failure of the premise!
What do you think? All counsel welcomed. And, in a related question, what was your least favorite Whitman’s Sampler chocolate? For me, it was those cherry cordials. Ech! My sister Buffy would pinch the bottoms and cheat her way to the caramels.
Love,
Ann
You know what goes well with a hand towel? A dish towel. Definitely think you can just not incorporate then in the hand towel, and just make a neon and white dish towel using the same pattern, smaller..
I’m with Susie. I was going to suggest the extra same thing. Funky bright hand or dish towel with the green, pink and white. It’d be like a pistachio sorbet!
Agree with the “new project using only those colors” faction. Who cares what color a dish towel is?
Any chocolate with fruit filling ( except white chocolate with lemon)- the worst fruit-filled being pineapple
or a facecloth, different pattern?
Accidentally drop them into a vat of indigo?
Briliant!
That’s what I was thinking too! Indigo will dye linen and take the harshness off.
Why would you want to spoil anything by adding colors that just don’t work. Celebrate 17. I vote for the dish cloth or a luxurious shower body scrubber.
Absolutely!
I agree with Laurels suggestion. What you’ve done is lovely!
Leave the extras out and make a few tablecloths. What you’ve already done is great. As for the Witman’s sampler… I loved the caramels and I’d avoid anything with nuts. But my brothers vandalized most of them anyway… unless I was lucky enough to get a mini box for myself
I vote for leaving them out. If they don’t match the rest, don’t try to force them.
Who’s in charge of your knitting? You are! Leave them out if they won’t spark joy!!!
A Kon Marie follower, I see! I have not read the book but that question, “Does it spark joy?” has allowed this pack rat to really let go. How appropriate here!
I see points where I might have thrown those colors in, because I’d be right in the middle of their selfies. However, crammed together at the end, they’d really look awful with that lovely scarf. So, send me the cherry cordials (and maybe those three mini skeins?)- they’ve always been my favorites!
Your chevrons are gorgeous. I’d seam the two ends and call it a cowl.
My Dad bought me and my sister a Whitmans Sampler every Valentine’s day. The big yellow box. I wasn’t very good at sharing but I would always let him have the little man holding the box of candy that was in the middle, surrounded by all the others. There was no excitement in a solid piece of chocolate.
Could you cram them in on the very ends? One on each end, with a bit of white? Otherwise I think a 17 colour, 20-colour towel is amusing and shows you control your own knitting.
Make yourself a small towel with the green forming the garter stitch sections. Then it’s a toss up: if you use the pink for background, save the white for future adventures; if you use the white for background, then give the pink to someone who likes it.
I agree with Laurel as well. Remember how you resisted the yellow in your Spring Fever project? Resist again. This colors don’t work. It will be okay….
17 is a very nice number.
It’s prime, which is much better than 20.
Agree! For example, it is the sum of two cubed and three squared – that’s kind of special!
If you add any of the other three colors, they will always push their way to the front and render the rest of the towel/scarf background, which is so wrong.
Unless you find that indigo vat …
Its beautiful, gorgeous… just the way it is unless you have more of the same colours. Leave it, cowl it, I’d use it as a lovely scarf. Use the pink, green and white for something else.
Looks like a Lovely 17 color hand towel!
When you think about it, 17 rounds up to 20. Although I’m sort of shocked that the neon green never got a chance. I’d do the green and white for a pop of crazy.
Like.
Can also add just one row or ridge of the pink somewhere to that for interest…
Bind off, you’re done. Though the indigo suggestion is a good one.
The misfits would make an awesome Ballband dishcloth… Just sayin’.
Sis must have done her pinching in the years before she could read a chart, because both the old and new samplers sport “site maps” just under the lid.
The old sampler had such a variety of choices and I cannot remember them, but Buffy’s choice of caramel is an all time favorite!
I would also like to say, send my the cherry cordials and those summer washcloth mini’s, your scarf is done!
Bind it of or make it a cowl. Those three are little individuals. Let them shine in their own light!
Weirdo washcloth? I’m with you on the cherry cordials. Blech!
Leave those colors out. Surely there is something else you can make with them. (I have more than one project I can’t stand the sight of because I don’t like the colors — what was I thinking when I picked them?) As for the candies, I could not (and still cannot) tolerate anything with coconut. And I learned how to identify the caramels at a young age.
Will there be bad karma if it is only a 17 color towel/scarf? Those three leftover colors are pretty but belong in another universe.
How about slamming the door on those colors and save them for a spa cloth?
Chocolate? Those horrible jelly ones, yuk !!!!!!!
I am lucky to live in the hometown of DeBrand Chocolates ❤️!!!!!!
The best in the world!!!!
I think if you’re not at the end yet, you can easily make this work. One garter stripe of the neon green, much like the single red stripe, the pink seems like it would fit in relatively easily and the last stripe is white. Easy peasy!
I could see either option working, but I think I’m leaning more towards saving those colors for some fun little project where the whole fun of the project would be the colors.
As for chocolates…I am with you on the cherry chocolates–ew. But I also try to practice what my college friends and I said often in those college days, “Don’t yuck her yum.”
For all the many talents you two possess, I think I’ve finally found your weak spot! You both talk so much of your love of Missoni, but your color instincts tend toward … bland. (I say this as someone who considers leopard print a neutral, so take the criticism with a grain of salt.)
Missoni only works because of the tomato red, canary yellow, stark white, neon green, cobalt, or candy pink – but they have to be placed strategically and wedged in with a gulp and a crowbar. If you leave it up to chance you’ll never have the guts to jump on it, and you’ll end up with a finished piece that is “tasteful” and a handful of leftover colors that feel too glaringly bright on their own.
Bind off, toss those minnows back in the pond, and enjoy your beautiful scarf as your instincts have made it. But next time you commit to using a full color-line, plan ahead for the accents that don’t lie in your comfort-zone! 😉
I would agree with Honeybee33 here. Mr. Noro also does this, which is why the Noro colors look so great – there’s always that one or two you think doesn’t go which ends up making the whole skein. Like adding a little oregano to spaghetti sauce along with that ton of basil, just because that oregano just makes it.
Your so called weirdos look great together – make a washcloth with just them.
Definitely leave the remaining colors! What you have knit has a beautiful muted softness, and the remaining bright tones would ruin it (in my “humble” opinion). A hand towel or dish towel in the remaining colors would be lovely though — and quite cheery.
I’m with Buffy go for the caramels. My preferred method in to punch in the bottom, then carefully replace the rejects to cover up your crime. As for the hand towel – don’t mess with perfection. Use the left over colors to make one for the Barbie Princess Palace.
I’m going to go against prevailing opinion here (surprise, surprise) I think those brights need to get smashed in with some of the muddiest shades assuming you still have enough of those left. A hunk of weird bright/muddy in a sort of muted scarf will be gorgeous, just finish with one more swath of toned down right before the end. Check out the quilts of Gee’s Bend for some weird color combo inspiration.
Those last 3 colors would make a sweet baby something.
🙂 nice idea.
Leave them out or dip-dye. You might even be able to dip all three into the same bucket if you pick the right color. A camel shade could bring them all into the right color family for your blanket/towel.
I like the suggestion to leave them out, and make separate dishcloths. It’s amazing, and I love the black between the colours. So striking. As for the chocolates, my grandma used to let us bite into the chocolate, and if we didn’t like it, we could put it back and try another.
It’s a grandma thing!
I’d call it a throw because it looks so lovely on your chair. And I’d put those left overs in my use someday drawer. Maybe use for three washcloths. As to candy, I never liked the cherry flavored fluffy filling hiding under good plain chocolate. They just wasted good chocolate.
Don’t use them! Make a colorful washcloth out of them. Or a head band. Some bracelets. Maybe a stuffed animal. An Easter egg? Just don’t add them to your scarf.
Do you have a friend that loves Lilly Pulitzer clothing? If so, I’d knit those up with some turquoise or peacock blue and gift her with a scarf, handtowel, cowl, whatever! Your scarf is delightful as is.
Brilliant! There’s your plan, Ann: pick one or two more colors (because buying yarn is always fun) and make a Lilly Pulitzer accessory.
Looks to me like the time to put them in has past, the tone of the whole has been set, and pleasant neutral is the theme of the thing. You need to use them as “pop” in the middle, breezily, as if it were as natural as any other of the colors, but all together at the end, they will freak out. Think of the hot pink in the middle row of Fair Isle as your model, how that tiny little screech brings the whole thing to life. Maybe a willful snip, knit and grafting session is in order. I know you have the chops to do it.
Except for the cherry cordials, I liked just about any one of the mysteries in the Whitman’s Sampler. They were all coated in chocolate after all.
I was thinking the same thing. The time has past for those three colors. Like the one garter stripe of pink, these three colors needed to muscle in where they’d be like that unmarried aunt you adored when you were a ‘tween, all bright colors and jangly bracelets, who breezed into staid family Thanksgivings in her slightly-too-short skirts and a-tiny-bit-too-snug sweaters.
Perfect description!
I don’t know about Whitman Samplers, but in boxes of See’s Candy we used to get these dark cubes we called the Marzipan Horrors . . .
I so envy all you fortunate people who can eat chocolate! My last allergy testing added cocoa to my list of foods to avoid. Yes, I’m enjoying feeling better – but I sure miss chocolate.
My solution to the scarf is buy more yarn and use the neons and white for something for a random child.
Stop now. Those last 3 ARE too weird.
So, is your current 17 colorways long enough to stop and call it a scarf? Who is really going to count and know that you didn’t use all 20 colors? Maybe those colors, the cherry cordials of the Euroflax, should be in a towel of their own, where they might coexist happily and not harsh on anyone’s mellow.
No, no, no! Do not add those last three colors — your scarf is perfect the way it is!
In fact, those little skeins were trying to tell you something by separating themselves from your work: The three of them belong together, like spunky triplets. They’re the perfect Lily Pulitzer, Miami Vice combo. Surely you can crank out something with that as the theme, maybe throwing in a fourth color to tame things a bit, like a deep rose or a cerulean blue? Very tropical! Or maybe just use the white with the pink or the green, leaving the other one out? That would be fresh without being too much, if you get my drift.
Washcloths, yes. Refreshing summer washcloths. Pink + white = peppermint. Green + white = spearmint. Add a bit of handmade soap and you have a nice little hostess gift. Not that there’s any originality in that idea…
Whitman’s chocolates. Wow. I have an empty Whitman’s box filled with embroidery floss somewhere. I also remember the days when there was a Russel Stover store near my office in midtown Manhattan. You could walk in and buy one caramel, one coconut, one orange cream — whatever you wanted, in milk or dark — and carry them back to your desk in a little bag. Sigh.
leave out the neon, pink and white … use them for a bathroom handtowel … or a give-away !! love the look of the others
Yes, those should have been mixed in right from the start. They wouldn’t have been so jarring that way. Since you held them out, your subconscious must have intended a different use for them. Use them for your Easter Snood — er, “Bonnet.” Or, make a “glamorous” gown for the Famous Fashion Doll. Maybe Great Aunt Moneybags needs some new hand towels in one of the powder rooms in her mansion.
We used the Whitman’s as crayons because they were just as waxy as. Besides, we had a Fannie Mae Chocolates shop just a few blocks away!
Odd numbers are better than even numbers. If this is hand towel size leave it be. If it’s bath size, knit a wash cloth. I love this towel you’ve knitted.
I say quit while you’re ahead on the scarf. Don’t spoil it with colors that will just seem like a bad afterthought. Nothing wrong with a 17 color scarf. Instead, take those three colors and make a nice little towel or a washcloth or two. They are perfectly lovely in combination and deserve the chance to shine on their own.
I love the “mellow” you have going on. The outliers can have their party in another project. Sometimes you have to admit defeat, but you can have the last word. Call it the 20(-3)-Color Euroflax Mini Skein Scarf. 🙂
It ‘s just right as it is. If you felt compelled to do another, just look at the leftmost photo of your gradient sets for inspiration.
Those were my thoughts. As an earlier commenter said, the weirdies needed to be accommodated before now by conscientious planning, but that would have ruined the grab-n-go process Ann was using.
Beach towel! The finished item, that is.
I would just leave them out. I would probably never use the neon green — maybe cut into pieces to leave for the birds to line their nests?!
What would Kaffe do?
Those three colors don’t mesh so well with the dish towel, but they look great together. I say leave them out of the dish towel and turn them into their own separate thing.
Leave it reckless and 17, old enough to drive but too young to vote. It’s exactly where I want to be right now!
What knitting police said you have to have 20? It is your scarf/towel!
SEVENTEEN IS A MAGICAL NUMBER. Also, did you know that the date of your birthdate is likely to be “your” number if it’s an odd number? Just saying, 17 is a great number. Fantastic.
Get a regular skein of blue or navy or something and zing those together for a sister project, don’t ruin the rest of the glory, please?
Some projects are awesome with the “never expected that crazy clashing color to pop in” and it makes them amazing. This is not one of those.
I’m with the Make a Separate Small Thing camp. They might have been eye-catching accents spread thorough the larger, but that flight has taken off. Besides, the 3 of them look great together.
Least favorite chocolate in the box? The peanut brittle. When I want chocolate, I want soft. It’s a rude shock to bite into a shard of caramel glass.
I say leave ’em out. Use the pink, mint and white to make a smaller towel for Lily Pulitzer’s bathroom!
Count me in to the Make a Separate Thing Camp. Go with the 17 and be done. It’s gorgeous the way it is. Re: The Whitman Sampler, one year my sister stuck her finger in the bottom of EVERY SINGLE ONE and left them in the box. I was traumatized for life.
Split each skein into two, and put one set on one end and one on the other!
Then your crazy colors will be symmetrical.
yeah – separate item – don’t add them – a 17-skein scarf is a much nicer odd kind of number anyway.
I heart everyone here. I heart caramel glass and symmetrical crazy and separate items and dye baths. Baby things and Grandma chocolates and the number 17. You are all fantastic :). xo
And I heart YOU, Alice.
Three of these are not like the others! Three of these just do not belong! (kid’s tv show from the 1990.) Congratulations on finding the ringers. Do not let them in to spoil what you’ve done. This is not their place.
The remaining colors will make a cute washcloth for a very preppy friend. Not me, but there are people out there who would love it. Meanwhile, it seems like the linen towel has become a shawl, or perhaps a poncho (fold in half, sew up one side leaving room for the head to go through) Remember, it will never die (my first Euroflax garment is, at least, 15 years old. I wear it all summer, every year), so it should be put to noble use.
Don’t fight it. The extra three colors will make something completely different, all on their own. They appear to come from another color universe. Maybe something for a baby?
I have to add another comment, having read the references to the number 17. True story: Many years ago I had the chance to interview the late Madeleine L’Engle. She was still writing, and serving as writer-in-residence at St. John the Divine (shout-out for the Upper West Side). She told me the following story–I think she was writing it: One day in the far future, human beings succeed in perfecting a computer that can answer any question in the universe. Of course, they ask it, “What is the meaning of life?” The computer says, “I can answer the question, but I warn you, you’re not going to like the answer.” They say, “Just tell us.” The computer says, “Okay. The answer is seventeen.” They say, “Seventeen!!!??? What kind of an answer is that???” The computer responds, “I told you you wouldn’t like it.”
I would love to hear a citation if she ever actually published this (or if it comes from somewhere else). Meanwhile, seventeen seems like a great place to stop knitting your blanket!
I believe the story is from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, however the number in the story is 42.
I think you should let the weirdies have their own happy little party all to themselves in a dishtowel or some warshrags.
I think the issue here is not that you do not want to use the yarn in this project. It is the yarn itself that does not want to be used in this project. It clearly does not feel like it belongs so don’t push it. Let it be what it wants to be. I’m thinking cast on a circular and work the chevron until each color runs out. Put the white in the middle to balance the other two (otherwise they’ll fight.) Come some dreary damp chilly morning in February, it will be just what you are looking for.
I’m thinking a 17 colour linen towel (scarf) is much better than a 20 colour scarf (towel) with 3 bandit colours!!! Make a couple of nice facecloths for your next hostess gift and be done my girl, be done!!
I agree that the worst ones were the drippy cherries. Blech. And…maybe it’s just my monitor, but the pink actually looks as if it fits well enough, though I definitely agree that the green and white are at a separate party. I like the idea of dyeing them all to make them more mellow, but don’t know if you want to fuss with that.
Keep the three weirdies. Toss all the other sad colors.
Know when to quit. Make a towel with the orphan colors. If you must use them, embroider your initials date, flowers…
The thing I want to know is, how do some people get little pictures beside their comments?
If you haven’t put those colours in yet, you are not going to now, I think!
If you have a wordpress account, it is a profile picture.
thanks!
Love what you knit. Knit what you love.
Find another project for the bright ones.
I hated all fruity chocolates, and most of the creams too. These days I’m all for dark chocolate with caramel and sea salt, don’t think that has made the simpler yet!
Gonna join the minority opinion here…they need to be in there. Maybe in skinnier stripes, 2 rows at a time. So they add assymmetry as well as a bright ping. Assuming you have enough of the other colors left to make it look like they aren’t just tacked onto the ends.
xo
I have nothing more to add except to say that you all are throwing the best yarn party on the internet.
Stay with the 17 colors and just repeat them if you have more yarn and want a longer scarf.
My least favorite is the caramel and favorite is the cherry cordials
As far as the colors…my opinion is to leave them out
Send the wierdies to a dishrag! At least they look good together.
Cherry cordials. Then jellies. Although with the jellies you could pick the chocolate off. Much poking of fingers in the bottoms. Those colors are from a different layer.
Here’s my crazy idea: turn the “Chevron Hand Towel” into a lightweight Readers Wrap (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/readers-wrap). Use the weirdies to make pockets and make them in the same Chevron pattern. Then sew them on. I think it could be awesome!
Disclaimer: I haven’t worked with or worn linen in a long time so it may not work as a Reader’s Wrap type garment, but maybe?
Lovingly set those aside and turn them into a face cloth 🙂
Bubble Yum looks like she wants to be a flamingo on a separate dish towel in a sea of neon green….with a white garter edging.
The hand towel/scarf is very pretty now with its 17 colors.
I think you could have channeled Steven west and put those colors in there. //maybe snuggled the pink in with the green and the green in a random strip, but since it is all over but the binding off, why stress.
Warshrags and a few of those little rose shaped soaps that i found captivating as a girl, and some baths salts – toss them in a jar with a bow and give them to the music teacher. I usually find that I need an extra gift during the holidays.
Dye them. A touch of black–use food coloring if need be, it works a treat with heat and a touch of vinegar–will knock those puppies back where they belong. Maybe use chamomile tea to make the palest yellow for the white.
Those three colors are perfect with each other. Separate project!
I like your “Almost 20” scarf/hand towel/thingy.
Duplicate stitch a little row (or even partial row) in a couple of different places for each color. They’ll add a little surprise, you’ll have your 20 colors, and you can still use them for one of the other ideas that have already been proposed. I think in the marketing business they’d call that a “wink”. 😉
I say call it a 20 color scarf even though it only has 17. Kind-of like the very first therapist I saw who told me we would have a “50 minute hour.” Sadly, I didn’t follow my instincts and dump her right then and there. Alas.
Btw, it’s GORGEOUS!!!!
“Failure of the premise”? Change the premise. Knit the 3 loud colors into something else. Any soft-center candy is yucky. My siblings and I all pinched the bottoms to make sure we only bit into the good stuff.
17 is a PRIME NUMBER. It’s ‘way better than 20, which will divide with almost any number out there…
“Inclusion” classrooms have been pretty bad for American children’s education. Let your bright kids shine. Together. Somewhere else.
Clearly they were never picked for the towel team, let them play happily with each other.
For some reason the three “weird” skeins look so much more youthful than the others which look really vintagey to me. Would tea-dyeing them briefly help? A coffee tone would probably blend them in better but I don’t know if coffee-dyeing is actually a thing!
Those three are great colours though! Could they work as an edging? Single crochet in thin stripes of pink, white and neon? I’d be tempted to make a trial swatch!
Chocolates first: I don’t usually eat Whitman’s but I’m a nuts and chewy kinda gal. But dark chocolate only. As for the knitting, looks like you leaned heavily on the warmer side of colors. As others have said, there were openings to add the 3 additional, but it really does look completed. I can’t say that a hand knit dishtowel is worth time and trouble – for goodness sakes, go to the store my friend – but if you use these 3 together, you’ll be ahead of the game and ready for spring 2017.
I agree with everyone about separate dish clothes unless you have a tassel yen and make some fr the end. Me I’d find a suitable child’s head and hat it!
Seventeen is a wonderful number…stop before you ruin all your hard work. The first time my husband brought me a Whitman’s Sampler, I kindly asked that it be the last. There wasn’t a single carb-worthy piece in the whole box.
Put those 3 together into a washcloth (face cloth) and call it a day . . .
Make a pocket square with the “final three”
Sounds like you got your answer! Definitely a different, ‘three are lovely by themselves’, cloth.
And, coconut….EWWWWW. Those get spit out forthwith.
I really hate to be a party pooper BUT if the goal was to include ALL the colors and you are intent on doing that…….I could have easily seen a fit-in for the pink, and, as someone memtioned, evens short span of the other two. I love it as it is, but I do not think it would be ruined with the three brights. Give it a go….can always frog.