AJ taught me this trick. I'm not sure who taught her...or if it's her own invention, but I do know that it comes in handy when it comes time to pick your wool for whipping.
When I first started hooking, I often blended several fine yarns together to get just the right whipping colour. How do you know if it's the right combination without actually whipping a section? Just wind your yarns around a pencil. Now that I've started dyeing yarn to whip with (I dyed this one on Sunday, using the large plastic bag and microwave method described here, photo here)...I still use the pencil to see how the colours will all blend together.
Not only does this trick let you check out the colour, it also approximates the width of your whipping. You can also get a really good idea of how it will look when it's completed and the impact the chosen colour(s) will have on your border. In my piece, I think that the overall border will be too wide (and therefore too strong) if I keep both of the hooked rows of reds (above)...so instead I'm going to use just one (as in the photo below).
But before that happens, I also need to replace the medium-dark green row *as per AJ's instructions* to a thinner row of very, very dark. I will try to remember to take some before and after pictures...because when we laid a darker piece of wool on top, the impact was very obvious.
In the next couple of nights, I'll be continuing to work on the snow folks...and then finishing up the landscape rug is the next one in the queue.
