Beaumont - Part 1

I got going on the Beaumont hat and knit up about maybe 3 inches of the colorwork pattern and realized that the colors were just not popping. The colors pop in the picture - so why not in mine?

After consulting with some friends at lunch today (yes, I have a knitting group at work - I know, a sure sign of sickness) I was told by the Colorwork Goddess, Carole, that the problem was:

1. my tension was waaaaay too tight, and


2. I was doing stranded knitting, which is not needed in a hat ('cause it's not going to catch on anything like a mitten or something like that would). Also, since I'm using a Navy blue and white combo, the whole light/dark color thing - twisted stranded knitting does not help with this.

Carole was also good enough to send me a very useful link from Knitty on Color Stranding, which I though was way cool. Thank you, Carole!

So now I've ripped out the work so far - score is currently Hat: 1 and Jen: 0. But it's only the first quarter. More news to come as it happens.