Flombre

Today in the KNITSONIK & Friends Colour to Knit Club I was finally able to launch FlombreFlowers + Ombre – a super matchy accessory set of cowl, hat and mittens which 1. celebrates the interplay of light and shade on flowers 2. utilises the wondrous gradient powers of John Arbon Textiles’ Knit By Numbers yarn range.

Taia wears the Flombre cowl and peeps from it mischievously

I worked on this design last summer while feeling too ill to do anything other than knit; a kindly neighbour kept bringing me amazing sweet pea flowers which, – together with cornflowers from my garden – perfectly matched my projects. This design will always remind me of quiet nights, the bounty of the garden in high summer, and the kindness of friends and soothing colours.

pink sweet peas and blue cornflowers with my blurry knitting project in the background

I loved the rhythmic colour-changes when I worked on this last year…

Flombre - a woman with blond hair wears matching hat, cowl and mitts, all featuring a shimmery ombre gradient worked in blues and pinks

…and the anticipation of moving to the next shade in each sequence.

Mittens of blue and pink rest over a full navy skirt in a close-cropped pic that mostly shows the Flombre Mittens

For this design I repurposed the motif from my Efflorescent Shawl: Cherry Blossom Edition to see how reworking shading sequences and making colour repeats much longer might transform how the whole idea of flowers is conveyed…

Efflorescent cherry blossom shawl, hanging in the trees in the Harris Gardens

Heidi looks left; her blond hair is topped by the Flombre hat in its shades of blue and pink

…like all the designs in the KNITSONIK & Friends: Colour to Knit eBook, the Flombre Accessory Set comes with lots of resources to uplift your creative play. Gradient planners; an essay on creative process; colouring-in pages to print and colour; and charts in full colour, black and white, and for you to colour in yourself, are all provided to get your creative juices going and to provide a framework for playing with gradients and shading sequences in stranded colourwork designs.

I felt Flombre would be the ideal stepping stone between Cheers! and the final design in the book, as with its two colours (hues) but rich interplay between values (light/dark) and temperature (hot/cold), the charts and accompanying notes for this chapter break down many of the ideas needed for planning more complex stranded colourwork designs. Here, though you are exploring values and temperatures, sticking with just two colours helps simplify things.

Plus, at the end of knitting this lot you will be really warm and joyously matchy-matchy.

Heidi peeps out mischievously from beside her mitts; they perfectly match her cowl and hat

YOURS IN ALL THE MATCHING ACCESSORIES,
FX

10 thoughts on “Flombre

    1. Hi Jeanne, lovely to hear from you – the pattern is part of an eBook being released chapter by chapter to club members who signed up in April – the eBook as a standalone product goes on general sale in August. This pattern is one chapter of four. Hope that helps to clear up any confusion!

    1. Such a gorgeous piece of knitting!! Light & colours play beautifully together Can wait to read all about it in the Colour to knit ebook!

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