Too much!!

I know I know, two posts in a week!

I'm determined to inflict every stage of this project on the world at large (well my half dozen or so followers at any rate!)

So the next stage is choosing designs.

This wool struck me as being Kauni's big brother. It's softer than the Kauni, but seems to have a similar colour range, so I've spent an hour or so sifting through my bookmarks to find a few possible charts. I really want this bag to be a work of art.

I've looked at everything from hexagon piecework to entrelac to Scandinavian two-colour charts and so far here's a selection. For anyone who's not heard of Kauni before, I recommend googling "Kauni Damask" for photos of the striking vibrancy possible with these rainbow wools. I don't want to get into copyright bother but cutting and pasting pictures direct.

So anyway, here are a few colour chart possibles: first the damask chart looks like this: then there are other charts taken from my favourite Scandinavian resource, Jessica Tromp:
Rainbow yarns can give an absolutely stunning effect when one ball is started off at a different phase from another. Kauni Damask is a fabulous example of this, but there are other contrast patterns that work well too. The important thing is that the "pace" of the colour changes in the two balls being worked stays the same, and this in a way dictates the choice of chart to be worked. So ideally the pattern chart will have equal numbers of main and contrast stitches, and there won't be one row where one strand of yarn travels across umpteen stitches that are knitted from the other ball - quite aside from the tension problems this can create, there will be more yarn used in the knitted stitches than in the carried yarn, with the result that the colours will get out of step with each other.

But having said *all* that, it might not matter too much once I've worked out the final bag shape and dimensions, and decided which colour panel goes where. I intend to use two or three designs for contrast; the jury is still out though whether I am brave enough to attempt to sew in the zip, or even to attempt the felting.

I feel a tension square coming on.