KNITTING UP DULWICH ROAD

This is my first attempt to place the ideas from an earlier post into the 7 x 7 layout. The background colours are wild approximations and there are still blanks because I’m not yet sure of the full colour span or how it will work. I’ll only be able to do this waaay down the line, with tons more observation up and down the road. But this gives me content to get working on.

Park squares

I’ve chosen the look for these, which is a wild multicoloured stranded pattern behind a ‘grille’ of dark open leaves. The background will be predominantly green, with more grey at the bottom and blue at the top. I plan to alter the shades slightly or use variant colour pops, perhaps with beads, for the four seasons. Who knows if this will be possible? I have to remind myself that this is vastly beyond my skillset.

Intarsia features

These are the 7 images and will have to be simplified considerably. S Errington should be relatively simple, but the Phlegm Esher-style mural will be tough, and Satan (for Milton Road) even harder. I’m hoping that the Chart Minder app that can create a knitting chart from an image will edit out a lot of the detail and I can smooth things out from there. The simpler Shakespeare image has already worked quite effectively. Each of these will be isolated onto a colour background, and I will work out what that will be by judging the local colours that seem to be missing from this. It might be as easy as a sky blue, because that will be incorporated into the park squares.

Bus squares

I plan to set the large white numbers on black inside bus-red squares. This may look terrible, so we’ll see. I will look out for opportunities to introduce the red elsewhere. Maybe a pop in the summer park square and also in the summer I’ll look for window boxes. Some of blank squares may be given to these, combining red and green.

Zebra crossings

These might end up being simple vertical stripes, but I think I’ll probably do something that will break the pattern down so it doesn’t draw the eye quite so fully.

Building features

There are three base colours of brick plus stucco window and door surrounds. Helpfully, the brick size and patterns for colour are distinct. The Lido bricks are already in development. I’ll look more carefully at the yellow and grey bricks further down the line. There is so much choice for the stucco; there are so many filigree and geometric designs up and down the road. The paint is stark white, but I’ll dial that down with a very pale grey (probably the Silver Grey Rico Essentials Organic Cotton that I’m ditching from the Lido wall) and a slightly darker shade of grey that will enable the relief pattern to show.