Hygge CAL Update #1: Colour Choices…

Did you see the beautiful CAL Scheepjes is hosting right now? It is called ‘Hygge’ and it’s designed by Kirsten of HaakMaarRaak. She designed a beautiful shawl or scarf and her design combines crochet and embroidery. A lovely combination of techniques. You’ve probably seen some photos of it being posted on social media. ‘Hygge’ is Danish (pronounced ‘hoo-ga) and means as much as ‘cosiness’. You can read a bit more about it here. All patterns are available for free either here or here.

I fell for it too… Initially, there were three kits available to choose from: the Rainbow kit, the Pastel kit and the Jewel kit. Later the special edition Mermaid kit was added. The kits come with all the yarn that you need and some goodies are in there as well. All four of them are really beautiful. I picked the Jewel kit because I liked the muted, deeper colours that suit me best.

Hygge Cal Jewel Kit (photo credit HaakMaarRaak)

The colours in the kit are beautiful…but still… the Jewel kit also has a lot of ‘rainbow’ feeling to it. And I am not a rainbow type of person. So I decided to compose my own colour combination, using the same Scheepjes Catona yarn that is included in the kits. There are so many colours to choose from… it should be possible to make a combination that fits my personal taste!

I tried to do that colour selection on my computer using the Catona colour charts that you find online. But soon I found out that this way was too complicated. On-screen colours are just too different from the colours in real-life. So I made a kind of pre-selection, wrote the colour numbers on a list and went to a store nearby. I picked different red, pink, purple and orange tones, more bold ones and more subtle ones… I’m happy with these colours!

A comparison of the original Jewel kit (top) and my custom selection (bottom):

Then there is another challenge… in which order am I going to use the colours that I picked? The difficulty here is of course that only snippets of the entire project are released… of course to keep the surprise factor of a CAL! In the meantime, some tips and tricks for the upcoming CAL were published and these included the colour order of the yarns in the kits. I decided to go for a somewhat semi-scientific approach (being the perfectionist that I am…) and I put the colours of the different kits in an Excel sheet. The first row shows the colours that I picked in a random order. The colour order of the Mermaid kit was most helpful to me (being only greens and blues), so I sorted my colours according to that one. Starting with the pink tones, then the purple ones, moving on to the reds and finally the orange hues.

I really like the deep purples and reddish tones and the fresh colour pop of orange!

To keep track of the colours and their corresponding codes in the pattern, I’ve made a little colour chart. It makes the preparation process even more fun! I created a simple table in a text document, printed it and folded it in half. I then used a lovely heart-shaped punch to punch out the holes where I attached the different colours of my yarn. Finally, I wrote the corresponding colour numbers down as well, just to make sure! If you’d like to use this colour keeper too, you can download it here!

In the ‘Tips & Tricks’ section, a small pattern for a test swatch is included (to make sure you use the right tension). It was also the perfect tool for me to test my colour order! It’s lovely, isn’t it? I’m so curious how it is going to look on the entire shawl!

Last Wednesday the first part of the pattern has been released and I’m in the middle of it right now. We’re starting with bobbles! I have to be honest with you… it took me three attempts to get the bobble stitch as I wanted it to be. Happy with my bobbles now, though!

Are you joining in on this CAL and what colours are you using? I’d love to hear what you think! Happy Sunday! I’m off to my bobbles now, just a few more rows to go…

Colour overview:

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