Friday, February 17, 2023

Amsterdam - A Bat and a Box of Wool

 


A few years back I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and took photographs of some of the exhibits. There is one of a stuffed bat that I've yet to investigate and then there is this one, a Chinese lacquered box containing a paltry collection of woollen yarn - not even enough to knit an infant's bonnet.

Apparently, Van Gogh used coloured yarn to experiment with colour matching which he then brought to his painting. Recently, whilst at the Van Gogh exhibit in Belfast I learned that some art historians have a theory that the artist suffered from a form of colour vision deficiency*  where there is a predominance of yellow in vision. Before I had my cataracts removed I had become accustomed to yellow tones in my vision but not quite as yellow as looking through the Lucozade cellophane wrapping**. After my procedure blues were clearer. It was like seeing through the eyes of a child, the colours were wonderful.

Now I've realised that what I have always loved best about knitting stripey jumpers is using different colours and what will do first when beginning a new project is decide what colours I will not be using. The last one (I finished it yesterday and still have a little bit of sewing to do) was to have no green, yellow, white or orange. The one I started today will definitely exclude pinks and bright reds. 

Which gives me a problem. Sometime before Leitrim Sister's special birthday, I promised I would make her a jumper or cardigan with sixty colours. I must have been on the wine. If you are reading this LS, could you please let me know which colours to leave out?


Research completed, too easy with Google. Stuffed bat, maybe this one, was painted by the  artist.

*Xanthopsia

**Only Boomers will know about the yellow cellophane



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