I don’t honestly know that Josef Albers would want a poncho, but I have decided that I absolutely, positively need to expand my own poncho wardrobe.

Further, I have got it in my head that there is no reason my poncho should not be a color study of sorts, and so I have fashioned the squares for the poncho after some of those included in Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color would be perfect.

Among other things, Albers observed:

Color is the most relative medium in art.

And as anyone who has ever painted a wall knows, the small bits of color on the myriad swatches from the paint store are not always an accurate indicator of how that same will look on a larger expanse — like a wall.

Further complicating matters, how a color appears changes depending on the source of the light falling on it. Things that look perfectly fine under fluorescent light can (to put it charitably) look a bit off in daylight.

Myself, I prefer to do what I call my “color work” in natural light, so I was thrilled when this afternoon was warm enough for me to bundle up and head out to my back deck to do some work.

I decided (at least for the moment) that I would use sixteen colors which would mean that each color would be used twice, once for the first two rounds, and once for rounds three through six.

After a couple of hours of sunshine and crochet, I had narrowed my colors to these sixteen:

There is a good chance that between now and finishing the project, I will change my mind about one or more of the colors, but one thing is certain: I will learn something, and I have no idea what that something will be.