Color Codes

If you ever ran into me at a paint store, you would recognize me instantly. Because I am the one who stands at the paint chip display just a little too long. Pretending to be selective about the color cards I pull for review. And, well, I am trying to be selective. Nonetheless, I end up with a stack of color cards a mile high. Nearly one of each. Always, though, not the one color I meant or needed to grab.

I will vascilate endlessly between shade-off colors. Wondering if just that extra hint of green might translate well in my south-facing room. The one with the spruce just outside the window. Now, will the greens cooperate? Will they be overwhelming? Should I maybe, instead, pick up the blue flecks in the plant and opt for a color with a bit of a gray cast? Or maybe I should go complimentary colors?

Rick? What do you think?

And yes. I do expect that he's followed me through that entire, excruciating discourse. I should get him a trophy or something this Christmas: here's to making it through not one, but two 'let's paint the entire house' whims. But he knows. Certainly by now, he knows. I did, after all, paint his bedroom a shade we now fondly refer to as electric seafoam within our first six months together. And spent the next six months we lived there plotting my color counter-attack.

He's developed an admirable patience with it all. Particularly since I always rope him into doing the painting.

Anyway -- so that's me. Hemming and hawing back and forth over paint chips. Running out to see them in the natural light. Then searching for the darkest corner in the store to check the color out in low-light conditions.

It should come as no surprise to learn that I have been asked by many a helpful clerk, "Well, what colors do you like to wear?" Or, the more discerning among them will say, "I see your sweater is green. What about this nice soft mint?"

I think these questions are naive, ridiculous, and lovely. And I have soft spot in my heart for anyone who's ever asked.

But maybe I've been too quick to discount such color-picking theories. And here's why I might possibly be coming around:

Last week, at the farmer's market, I fell victim to the irresistible pull of sunflowers bundled with some charming, pink thistle-y things. They've been sitting, centerstage and proud, on my table all week. And now, now that they are withered and ready for the compost heap (if only I had one), I spied them hanging out on a shelf with some yarn. Yarn that's been sitting around for ages. Yarn I keep meaning to do something with. And, well, the resemblance is obvious.

So the yarn's time is now, I guess. It feels inevitable that I should finally cast on for those Transition Gloves. Like the season, the colors, the flowers demand it. I have been called. And I intend to obey.

Maybe this is a universal truth about yarn? Maybe I can expect someone at the LYS to ask, as I stand in front of the thousands of colors looking thoroughly perplexed, "Well, what color flowers have you bought lately?" Maybe this will become an accepted, practiced, evangelized technique.

Or maybe I just spend too much time in paint stores?