Thursday, May 17, 2007

THE COLORS OF SPAIN, PT 1

The Shell Dance Capelet looks out over Spain

If it's true that we only use 10% of our brain's true capacity and I dedicate at least half of my available cranium resources to the pursuit of color, what's left? Awful thought, that. Maybe I'm running on empty, my brain so stuffed with designerly notions, I can't retain a solid thought. I can't remember my own cell number but I recall exactly what color a friend wore to dinner three years ago. 

In fact, I know what I was wearing in grade five when my now oldest friend came up to me in the school yard to say: 'You dress funny. Let's be friends' --a teal coat, gold velvet tam with a brown pompom on top, gold knee socks and red shoes, hardly the dress code of the day. I'd periodically raid my mother's closet for interesting pieces to combine with my own duds. Though Edith claims me to be ahead of my time,  I suspect plain eccentricity ruled my day. I didn't understand why dressing in the boring uniform of freshly peer-pressed skirts and penny loafers equated to popularity. 

I'm digressing again. Really, I began writing today about the colors of Spain. My first impressions of the countryside, formed as they were during the first few rainy days of my visit, are of soft, sherbert yellows fused with pink melding into soft green. Everywhere I looked, the stepped landscape of orchards blurred into the mist forming the nexus of my Spanish memory clips. Rain makes for interesting light, blending watery brush strokes across the landscape. 

The hue of stepped orchards captured in yarn

Amal and I  spoke about color and landscape constantly, studying her swatches as if they were little texture shots of everything around us. Those hanks of Colinette yarn caught my eye because they seemed to capture the exact colors of the stepped hills right outside her front door. What you can't see from the 'stepped yarn' photo are the sprigs of new cherry blossoms and the loquat-laden trees just off to the right. Hence the yellow and the pink.

After I returned home, I ambled through my own designs for similiar Spanish colorings and came across the Shell Dance capelet, a paler-than-usual (for me) drop-stitch wrap knit in Blue Heron rayon tape and rayon metallic. It so reminded me of those stepped hills and of the lovely ochre-hued light that suffuses the land on misty days. I though afterwards that perhaps the very earth gave off this lemon light. You can almost see it glowing from the stone walls, the tiles, the pottery. Yes, my friends, Spain does come in yellow.