I have been playing with the dyes again for my stranded knitting project. One more orange and one more green.

This is the new orange between its two immediate neighbours.

The Kemtex Acid Dye in Yellow is definitely not as bright as the Jacquard Bright Yellow. They do have another range called Kenanthrol acid dyes, which have a variety of shades of yellow. I’m not sure what is the difference between them and the Kemtex acid dyes, but they might be worth investigating in future.

I think I have got the 12 colours for the background sorted now.

The new green was another experiment for a foreground colour. I think this one is very pretty but is too yellow for this project.

Here is the new green in the middle, with last experimental green on the left, and the original green I used for the knitted sample on the right.

I think I am going to have another attempt at dyeing a green which is more similar in colour to the one on the right, but more solid than I have so far managed with the Jacquard acid dyes. I do rather like the bluer one on the left though, it makes a good contrast with all the oranges and I think it is a definite contender.

I have now measured my tension from my sample, and started working out the charts – I think this will be quite a long process! I have a rough idea of how the patterns should fit in, and have worked out most of the logistics on my rough sketch. The charts themselves will take a while though, I am using excel and am not particularly fast. Have any of you used any of the knitting charting programs out there? If so what do you think of them? I have been looking at Knit Visualizer and have just downloaded the demo to have a play with. The details of how I am going to do the shaping will take some working out too! Hopefully I will actually be able to cast on for the real thing fairly soon.