More Worrying about Colour

The builder comes to do the door on Friday 5th November which means I lose a Bournville class. Oh well, it is definitely in a good cause. And the plumber cometh today. We have had a leaking overflow pipe for months and now the weekly gardeners  are complaining about it and what with winter coming which the Met Office says will worse than last year - - - the time has come to have it seen to.

I bought two leather paring knives last week. Yesterday I put a leather handle on the English paring knife The French one (above in photo) comes with a beautiful wooden handle - why are the English so mean? I cut a strip of bookbinding leather 20 mm wide and practised wrapping the handle, then applied Araldite to one side only and carefully wrapped the handle so the strip had butt joints. Put it under a weight and it looks okay this morning. Th leather has discoloured with the Araldite but it will get discoloured in use anyway. I need to make sheathes for them but intend to machine stitch these which means new sewing machine needles. So they have cardboard sheathes for now. I will get the needles in Worcester tomorrow

A piece of the green dyed silk velvet has gone into this piece of Mola Work. The advantage of this technique is that once it is machined stitched, I can sit with Michael and cut out the sections.

I have managed to get 60% of the Megado threading done.  I hope to finish today. The new warp is sitting where I can easily see it from the Megado and I can't wait to see if this has worked!!!

I have been thinking a lot about colour. It is all very well knowing the percentage of each of 10 colours in an admirable photo but how can I use this information? Start with the assumption that I can match colours in dyed yarn. This is feasible for me with acid dyes and dubious with Procion MX as I don't have as much experience there. That is just saying I might be restricted in the type of yarn I choose.

To get the same percentage colours in weaving is not the same as counting pixels in a photos.  In a weaving, a pixel is the visible warp or weft thread at any point. Firstly a weaving has got a 3D aspect and the shadows, however small, will affect the apparent colour. Secondly a photo has patches of pixels which are the same colour close together but that is difficult to organise if you want to have 10 colours. Options are

1) Use space dyed warps and do a warp faced fabric by using a very fine silk weft with a much thicker warp yarn. Problem is I want pattern too! And a balanced weave.
2) ditto spaced dyed weft
3) Dye skeins of warp yarn in ten solid colours and have random stripes. Don't want stripes. Too samey all the way down the yardage and I want change/shimmer over 5 to 10 yards.

4) space dye the warp yarn in brighter colours than the 10 selected Use a very neutral grey weft thread. Not sure how I match the warp colours but this seems an option with potential

5) space dyed both the warp and weft with 10 selected colours. I can't help feeling this might be a mess.
6) If I do a long warp space dyed in the right colours, I could try out various wefts.
7) I could stretch out a warp in the garden and paint it.

So 4, 6 and 7. I can see a lot of experiments taking place.

The trouble is that I can see in my mind's eye what I want but the resolution there is not good enough for me to see detail never mind count pixels!  Am I being unreasonable? The jury is still out on that one.