Today's Happenings

Aesthetic

Hello and welcome back to the blog! So, over the course of this month, I’ve told you how thickness, texture and colour can impact your craft. However, I wanted to talk a bit more about colour before rounding off this section.


Being a teenager, I’m very used to school cliques - how teens split into friendship groups based on interests, fashion and other factors. For example, you have the popular people, the musical groups, the sporty ones, the geeks (the group that I fall into without a doubt) and many more! However, when it comes to colour, fashion and craft, I think we could all benefit from listening to artistic people, who define their style as “aesthetic.”


I’m sure you have all heard the term aesthetic before and in a sense, it means the same thing both to young and old. However, for some people, it’s more than just something that looks nice. It’s all about what shapes, colours and patterns draw you personally. For a lot of people, this means pastel colours or colours that are quite similar to each other but ultimately, aesthetic is a personal choice; nobody else can decide what you like. You may remember that in my first post about colour, I revealed that less than half of the respondents of my survey said that they wear their favourite colour often. This is why I think it’s so important to use this approach to find a style that is true and authentic to you.


But how exactly to you find your aesthetic? It sound like a complicated thing, finding out your entire style. However, it’s actually quite simple; all you have to do is look for things in your everyday life. As one of the participants of my survey said, colour is everywhere. I’ll give you a couple of examples of how I find colour schemes that I like. 


Personally, I am a huge fan of nature. Every week, I go on a walk around my local area and even though I often go to the same places, I almost always find a new area or something that looks completely different depending on the season. Here are a few photos that I have taken both on walks recently and on trips out in the spring and summer.

I also like to get colour inspiration from food, whether that’s healthy and hearty meals, fast food or sweet treats. I haven’t cooked in a long time, but when I do cook I love to take photos and share them on social media because some meals can look really pretty! Here are a few photos and whilst not all of them are super colourful, they can still give me inspiration for shapes and patterns or if nothing else, looking at the photo just brings back happy (and hungry!) memories. 

Alternatively, whilst it can be nice to be inspired by something specific, I often find I’m inspired by the most random things! One of these is flags (both country flags and pride flags) as the colour schemes can be surprisingly pretty. This interest sparked after a few of my friends noticed that some clothes that I had made matched the colours of some pride flags, completely by coincidence. Whilst I wouldn't particularly want to make a Union Jack jumper or anything like that, I would like to make some things inspired by the colours in some African countries' flags, as they are often very detailed but vibrant. You can also take inspiration from logos, TV characters, album and book covers and so much more.


Once you’ve got your inspiration and few photos, get looking for your wool! Pick out your favourite colours and search for wools in those shades online. If you have a lot of specific colours to look for, it can be quite challenging as once you’ve picked one brand, you’ll want to make sure that your other colours are the same thickness and fibre (or at least something similar). Here are a couple colour schemes that I have made based on some of the photos I put up earlier - see if you can work out which photos they go with!

When it comes to matching colours, here are a couple brands that I recommend which have a wide range of shades available.

• Stylecraft Special DK (this is what I used for the colour schemes above)
• Sirdar No 1 DK
• Sirdar No1 Chunky
• King Cole Magnum Chunky

If you’re struggling to find colour inspiration still, sometimes you have to use wool itself to inspire you. If you take look at our online store, you can find a wide range of both solid colours and multicoloured wool. Personally, I like multicoloured gradients best but as I said earlier, it’s your personal choice! Here are a few photos of multicoloured wools that I just love, as well as a photo of the Super Chunky cardigan in shades of pink that I recently finished.

Finally, I had to mention the app Pinterest. Personally, I've heard people talk about it a lot but have only recently downloaded it and I can tell you now, it’s amazing for finding aesthetics and colour schemes. If you want to see our colour recommendations as well as many other pins to inspire you, I suggest that you follow us, under the name Avicraft Wool, on Pinterest.


I hope that this has helped you find your aesthetic and discover the colours and patterns that you truly love. Now, I’m off to gather more ideas too!


Until next time, happy crafting! 
Caiti x