I buy the great majority of my yarn online, and to try to get an accurate idea of the color, I will often find the same yarn on several websites and compare the colors in the photos. There can be a lot of variation! WEBS and purlsoho.com usually have large and luscious photos of yarns (not always a guarantee of color accuracy, however). I should probably buy a selection of color cards; at this time the only ones I have are for Louet yarns.
Anyhoo, I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to visit one of my go-to LYSs, Elissa's Creative Warehouse in Needham, MA. I had my orders: one son wanted red, the other, orange. I was thinking something like Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece: a wool blend, relatively durable and easy to care for-- since we're talking about a designing a vest for a 5- and an 11-year-old boy. The Cotton Fleece was there, along with many, many other choices, but this is what I ended up with: Adrienne Vittadini "Trina", a hand- or machine-washable heavy-worsted blend of merino, microfiber and cashmere. Certainly not the cheapest, nor the most durable yarn available; I chose this simply because I loved the colors, both the red and the orange (the colors in the photo above are pretty close to the real thing). The red is a vibrant true red, shading neither into pink nor purple, and the orange is a deep, crisp orange, without a hint of sherbet or neon. One of the great advantages of buying yarn face-to-face! (Oh yes, and it's also very soft.)
Malheureusement sur une photo d'ordinateur, on ne peut se rendre compte de la beauté des couleurs... Mais de la façon dont tu les décris, elles semblent vraiment magnifiques. Sorry for the comment in French language, but in English I can't say this, because I'm not good at English :-(
Posted by: melusine_tricote | July 08, 2008 at 02:47 AM
Your sons are quite lucky! I love to watch to your design processes. Can't wait to see the finished things!
Posted by: Dawn | July 11, 2008 at 06:33 AM