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#colormepurple

21st Dec 2017

A couple of weeks ago one of my daughters was helping me wind yarn, we were talking about yarn and color - go figure. It went something like this.

Her: Do you have any purples?

Me: Umm, like the ones in Raven's Wing, Nightsky, or Aurora?

Her: No, I mean like a real purple. 

Me: Oh, like in Purple Power, or Violets Are Blue.

Her: Violets are what?

Me: Violets are blue.

Her: Yeah, violets are blue, not - violets are purple!

Okay, I admit those are on the blue side of purple, the very blue side, and others are on the pinky or red side but that's what purple is, somewhere between blue and red, I didn't really think we needed any more purples. A couple of days later Pantone announced the Color of the Year for 2018 is Ultra Violet. Purple. Thank you universe, I can take a hint, I will do more purple! One of the first gradients I ever did, which about 2 people purchased was called Ultraviolet, it was intense and vibrant, but it was one the the original sets of 5 colors and it never made it into the 6 color series, and it may have been on the blue side. So rather than bring that color back, I decided to follow my lovely, prescient daughter's lead and do a "real purple". Et viola!

It seems Pantone selected ultra violet in large part for what the color symbolizes, part of which is creativity, pushing boundaries, magic and imagination. For me, that all evokes feelings of hope and change. As this tumultuous year comes to a close, my hope for 2018 is that the different voices and people of the world can listen to each other in an effort to gain understanding, for this reason I have named each color with words meaning purple from other languages. Light to dark: 

Color A - Zi wei (Chinese )

Color B - Lila (Swedish, Hungarian, German)

Color C - Roxa (Portuguese)

Color D - Odo odo (Igbo)

Color E - Purpura (Spanish, Latin)

Color F - Murasaki (Japanese)

And I will leave you with this quote, which is at the top of a page where I keep notes about potential color names and their inspiration.

“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity.” — Herman Melville