The Ultimate Encourager

Yesterday it was my great privilege to attend a color workshop led by Brandon Mably, an artist, a colorist, and a sweet person with a vivacious personality. Brandon has been working in the studio of Kaffe Fassett, another brilliant designer and artist for more than ten years. Both men were in my home town yesterday to present their work and to inspire others to embrace color in their lives. The day began in the sewing loft of one of my favorite textile shops, Canvas Works, in downtown Olympia.

The primary medium for our work this day was knitting, and we all were instructed to bring a plethora of small windings and balls of yarn in an assortment of colors. Upon arrival and introduction, we were then instructed to share our yarn and to rob yarn from our neighbors freely. Very quickly, there came to be a large pile of assorted yarns in the middle of the room, something that I found quite exciting and stimulating! Then, we were instructed to choose six small lengths (about 1 yard each) of yarn in different dark-ish colors that pleased us, and to do the same with lighter yarns. These lengths were to be tied together to make two balls of yarn; one dark and one light. Here are my first two balls and my cast on row:

The idea was to create your own self-striping yarn in colors that you think you know and love. We proceeded to knit up a swatch of fabric in a pattern that was created by Kaffe many years ago called "Poppies." The pattern creates circles of color on a background of contrasting colors. It looks like this:

Before you begin, you decide if you want light colored poppies on a dark background, or the reverse. Brandon felt that I was a "Lighter Person" and so he encouraged me to make dark poppies on a light field. What the heck, I would knit myself a corset, if that's what he wanted me to do! And so we began to knit, and we listened to music, so as to discourage us from talking ("Don't ask your neighbor for help," Brandon declared, "She might be a trouble maker!" "If you have a question or need help, ask me instead.") This turned out to be a great strategy as we were able to accomplish so much more than we would have if we had been tempted to "help" our struggling neighbor.

Throughout our knitting, Brandon would drop little bits of inspiration and helpful insights and funny anecdotes. The first thing he said was, "I don't consider myself a teacher, I am an Encourager... I want you to be fabulous, but I can only do my part; you must do yours."

Brandon said that working with color was like working your muscles, you can't accomplish results by studying it, it must be practiced. Mistakes must be made in order to decide what works and what doesn't. In the words of Kaffe later on in the lecture, one must "Suck it and See." This was an expression that Kaffe fell in love with upon his arrival in London. The original reference was to trying a flavor of candy, he thinks, but it seemed applicable to color choice and also to life in general. He said that he overheard two politicians talking one afternoon and heard one say to the other, in his high British accent, "Is this a Suck it and see moment?"

After the first two hours, I had a tiny swatch of poppies that I felt loathsome towards! The colors hadn't come together in the way that I had expected, and I was dissapointed with it compared to what I had imagined, and especially compared to other people's in the room. It was time to break for lunch, and I resolved to eat quickly so that I could begin again and hopefully come up with something "presentable" for our show and tell after lunch. I covered my knitting with a piece of paper and was getting ready to go wolf down my sustenance. Brandon, like a predator looking for weakness in his prey, walked directly over to my knitting, uncovered it, and held it up in front of the class. "Oh NO!" I thought. He held the small swatch against his thigh and looked at me and asked me what I thought of it. Well, actually, from that distance it wasn't as hideous as I first believed. I said that I wasn't overjoyed with it, but from a distance, it wasn't too horrible. He said, "AHA! Lesson number one: we are blind to our work until we step away from it and view it from afar." He proceeded to say how much he liked the swatch and pointed out areas that worked particularly well and areas that probably didn't so much. "But," he said, "No ripping out, and NO re-doing anything. We will pick up where we left off after lunch and keep knitting." And so I was able to eat a thoughtful lunch and plan for modifying my color pallete in the next go 'round, something that Brandon showed us how to do. Here are some of the swatches from the first two hours of work: a rather unremarkable group, really. Mine is the one with yellows, second from the left on the top.

After we spent the afternoon knitting some more, here is what we came up with:

Aren't these GORGEOUS?? Every single one of them had some amazing elements of beauty, and parts that hadn't worked and that the artist was able to learn from and correct in later knitting. I felt so proud and inspired seeing our work up on the wall. Kaffe came in throughout the workshop and at the end he said that he hadn't seen such great work come out of one of Brandon's workshops in a long long time. High praise!

The take home message had to do with context: "Even a color, which seems vicious and dreadful on it's own, can shine when it is used in the right amount, and in the proper context," Brandon said. He brought out a scarf that Kaffe had knitted, using the poppy pattern. It was gorgeous and filled with every color imaginable. He had each of us try it on, and it looked beautiful on everyone, but looked totally different, depending on the color that the woman was wearing. Here I am, proudly wearing it:

It was such an amazing day, and was followed by a lecture by Kaffe that evening, which was also very inspiring. I found myself thinking about how the decision process used in creating art is very applicable to life in general. Life creates art and art creates life; at least for me! I also learned that the most important encourager is myself!

Thank-You to Brandon and Kaffe for sharing their passion, and Thank-You to Linda and Gary of Canvas Works for hosting this workshop; it was such a fabulous time. If you are interested, you can go to my Flickr photo page to see all of the pictures from this fun day

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bcharmer/sets/72157622406459849/