You know what else is yellow? Snot. I thought it was more green. Just depends on what you're producing, I think. How infected you are. But I thought you liked yellow. I do like yellow. I don't love mucus. Why do you make such negative associations with yellow if it's your favorite color?
Everything's a duality, right? It's not always going to be good. Yellow is you know what? We'll get into this. Roll the credits.
Light From Lantern presents: Knit A Spell.
I'm magical maker: Katie Rempe.
And I'm the maker of magic: James Divine.
Join us as we stitch together the symbiotic relationship between crafting and 'The Craft'.
Today in this episode, we're talking all about the magic of the color yellow. Yellow.
first impressions
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What are your first impressions on yellow?
It's definitely not mellow. No? It is. Yeah, I don't know why that song. Is it rhymes? Yeah, that's a color that I think can be very polarizing. I think there's people who are like, that's my favorite color or that is my least favorite color.
I think that do you want a car that is yellow? There are people who like you I've learned, I would love to have a yellow car. And then I think there's a lot of people who are like, that is the worst thing I can imagine is having a yellow car. To be fair. When I first saw that yellow car, I was like, that is the.
Ugliest yellow car I have ever seen and then by the time we rolled back to it at the end. I was like, I love it. I'll always be able to find it in a parking lot and nobody will ever hit me as I had before and I never got in one accident, so It's a powerful color.
Definitely communicates to people.
I'm excited today to talk about the color yellow.
what's naturally yellow?
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What is naturally yellow or shades of yellow? Growing up in the Sonoran Desert, Of Arizona, we would have in the springtime when it would rain.
A lot of the flowers in Arizona are yellow. So the two seasons when it rains are in the springtime and then the autumn. And so that is when. The Palo Verde trees would be covered in yellow flowers. That's when the California poppies, which are a little more orange, but sometimes they'd be a little on the yellow side, would blossom along the hill.
The flowers would go nuts and you'd see these washes of yellow, and it was so bright and gorgeous, and it would have you feel just so alive and electrified. So I think that yellow can sometimes just be boring. Cause I think that we see the sun is yellow and it can just be like, Oh, another yellow flower.
I'm looking for something more unique like purple or pink but man, sometimes just that yellow is so vibrant and can be so fantastic. Yeah, I always think of it as high energy. So like you said, like electricity a light bulb, or the sun, right?
Talk about energy. But even things like money. You reminded me in our episode about green that most of the world doesn't relate money with green except for, Americans because of the dollars or whatever. Most people relate money to gold. Because of coins and actual physical gold.
So that, duh, makes tons of sense. That's a version of yellow. That's right. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. But also soft little baby chickies. I just want to cuddle up with them and kiss them. Yeah, they're yellow. That's right. Yeah. And Easter bunnies can be yellow when they're dyed.
That's right. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Naturally yellow. What's naturally yellow? The egg yolk is yellow. Yum. Yep. Yep. And pollen. I'll tell you what. That'll stain you. Yes. Pineapple. So delicious. Yeah. And lemons. There's so many fruits. That are yellow and even vegetables that we like, and I like the yellow peppers better than the green peppers.
I think about a lot of things that we really love that are yellow and that can really bring, a lot of enjoyment. You know what I had the other day? What? A yellow watermelon. They were at the grocery store. They were pre quartered red watermelon and yellow watermelon and brought them both home.
And then I cut them up and like arranged them on a platter. And people were asking, what is this? And I'm like, it's all watermelon. And it was fascinating to taste and it was such a beautiful contrast of red and yellow.
You would have loved it. It tasted like summer.
negative correspondences
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So you did some research. On the correspondences with yellow and before we get into the positive correspondences of yellow, there are some negative correspondences of yellow. So let's talk about the negative first and let's end on the positive. I think it's more fun. So I remember watching like those old Westerns and like things as a kid.
It's always you're a yellow bellied sap sucker. What movie did you reference? What was it? Back to the Future. Oh, fever! Yellow McFly! Calling somebody yellow. indicating cowardice.
We were talking before we started, similarly, you could be called a chicken. And while I would think maybe that's delicious, Most people think you're being called a coward again.
And so isn't it ironic that chickens are also yellow and we did a little research on this, but the answer wasn't exactly definitive on where this came from, doesn't really come from that. So some of the research we did shows that there's a long history of the color yellow being associated with.
positive and negative things. So every culture through history has associated the color yellow with different things. And so obviously history has lots of gaps and lots of missing things. So from what we can see there's this idea, which is things that are yellow are sometimes used as a substitute For gold.
Like a cheap replacement. So this idea of yellow being a cheap imitation or a false sort of thing. There is a lot of. History that's captured in Christianity, where yellow was used to label heretics, prostitutes people who don't agree with Christianity or with the Catholic Church and yellow was used as a way to tag them or to indicate that they were not aligned with the church in whatever way.
And so there's a lot of history of that all the way up until the 16, 1700s, even and then. There's of course like your body will turn yellow if your liver isn't functioning well, and that wasn't necessarily known until later.
So that's a. condition you can have in your body. But, in the 18th century, so in the late 1700s, you start to hear the term yellow belly as a way to describe people as both xenophobic, referring to people where they're from. Eventually it came to be coined in the late 1800s in 1856 as a reference by P. T. Barnum. Where he said we never thought your heart was yellow, and it's this idea that you were a coward, that you wouldn't do the stunt.
It just continues on from there, that this sort of ends up through these many iterations over much history.
So I think that those are interesting that those colors come together and there can be some, racist ideology or some xenophobic ideology in there as well.
Is there anything that you wanted to add to that from the negative connotations of yellow?
I was just thinking. And another way that people are yellow is kids with jaundice. Babies are born with this deficiency and what do you do to solve it? You put them in the sun. So it's like the yellow kind of then fixes the yellow, which is also ironic in that reality. Yeah.
Exactly. And does that actually help them or do they just get a tan? They look great either way. They get their vitamin D and they get some breast milk and they get a little healthier. Yeah. It's interesting how there is this. Idea of, illness with our body and associating that with yellow.
And I think on top of that, that yellow is a very polarizing color. There are people who just aren't really interested or don't really like that color because it's too much and people who are very into that color because it just has a different association for them. So I think yellow
it's a complex color.
positive correspondences
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But it has some very powerful, magical correspondence that are very positive as well. Starting with the color gold duh, gold is universally you want an ounce of gold? I don't know anyone who would say no. They even put it in a drink it must be worth its weight in gold.
Oh, imagine that. Yeah. It's funny that it's a thing of great value and also seen as completely valueless depending on what it is and the shade that it is. And you're completely right because I recently did a poll on our YouTube channel on Light From Lantern. that asked people what their favorite color was and yellow was dead last.
So I was surprised that it even lost to greens, which historically I have found are the least favorite of most people.
Fascinating. So what are some of the magical correspondence of yellow, Katie? For anyone who's like into tarot, or color magic in general, you might be familiar with yellow being associated with air, and thus communication, and mercury.
Air is the element of thoughts, ideas, technology, like Katie said. For some people that do directions. That would be the direction of east, which is also where the sunrise happens.
So the yellow dawn, we might say. I didn't know this, that yellow is associated with the number and numerology of three. I had no idea. So that's a new one for me.
I wonder if it's part of the numerology around it being around creation and that sort of a thing and thus the sun aspect again.
That's my guess. That's cool. The solar plexus. Is that the third
chakra? Yes, third one. Oh, it is. And so it is associated with the solar plexus, which is the yellow chakra. So your solar plexus chakra will always occur in your center of balance. It could be anywhere below and behind your navel to up and above your navel. But that solar plexus chakra is your center. And that is, where your sort of ego lies, where your center is, where your center in all sense of that word is.
And it's where you radiate, how you show up. And so that's, Yeah, like the sun. And it's associated with a couple days of the week, unsurprisingly, Sunday. Oh, that makes sense. Sunday would be like the sun. Yeah. And then, of course, what's the day of communication?
Wednesday. There you go. Sunday and Wednesday. I wish we used Miércoles or Mercury Day instead of Wednesday. That would be better. If we just called Wednesday... Let's rebrand it. Can we just call Wednesday Mercury Day? That'd be better. That's when we release all our new episodes is Mercury Day chosen on purpose.
On purpose. You're welcome. Yeah, we did that for you.
yellow tools
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So what tools if I had magical tools is associated with the cauldron or the cup or the altar? What is our air symbol in the tarot? Oh, it's the swords. Of course. So the apame, the sword, but the wand is related with fire.
Maybe the wand is whittled into a pointy thing.
And thus it's a little more sort of some. Some people really see some people see the wands as air. Oh. And the swords as fire. So some people flip those around. So if you have an association of wands as air and you use swords as fire, you can see it that way too. Yeah. Always best to follow your personal feelings on things, yes.
Yep. So I don't know anything about feng shui. Did you look up feng shui associations? I did. So according to feng shui, it's all about being uplifting, bright, cheerful, and cozy, which makes a lot of sense. If you go into a house that has some yellow aspects, you're probably going to look at those. First, before anything else, we painted our kitchen yellow, so maybe that did our front door yellow.
Oh, that's cool. And everyone comments on it.
I have used yellow in road opening. Clearing and cleansing magic work because a lot of times I use lemon or citrus. Scented oils. And those are very yellow to me. So if I think about what does yellow taste like, what does yellow smell like?
I'm often going to associate with lemon. If I'm thinking about a lemon meringue pie or I'm thinking about, lemony sort of things, that's always like sunshiny lemony to me as often yellow. Oh, yeah. And then my brain goes right to like cleaners. All that citrus and vinegar and really earthy, but like high vibration, just that zing, right?
Yeah, I love that.
What's free association words with yellow? Katie, go ahead. Give me free association with yellow and go. Joy, sunshine, money, and gold, which is funny. That's awesome. Because it's the same. But yeah. How about you? Yellow. Let's see. Happy.
Beach. Bright. Energizing. Overwhelming. Don't close your eyes. Wake up!
It's not a relaxing color. To me, anyway. I don't find it, maybe certain shades, but generally it's like a high energy kind of a thing. That highlighter on your page is also pay attention to this!
That's right. Yeah, my brother used to call my car the highlighter. Yeah, vibrating there on the page.
And as we've said before, it's also known for intellect, creativity, communication, and enlightenment. It's all part of the same series. Yeah. It's very cool. Let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk about using yellow in making and magic.
That sounds awesome. All right. We'll be right back.
Learn Palmistry!
---
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Welcome back.
I thought it would be fun to, look at some companies that use yellow predominantly in their branding and their logo.
Where do people choose to use yellow in ways that we don't really think about? And you have this very cool graphic that we will link and put, we'll put this graphic in the show notes.
And when we think about the power of color as a way to communicate. And in marketing. This is a color emotion guide and it has logos from companies all set up by their predominant color. what Is your takeaway from this?
It's just such a great confirmation that color is emotion and the color that you choose for your company is going to, whether you intend to or not, set a certain mood. So you might as well do it intentionally like I'm guessing many of these companies did because I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of these companies line up with what the color is supposed to mean.
for example in terms of yellow, which is our topic today, you might be thinking of the little AOL guy, or perhaps the golden arches, or maybe that big ol Best Buy logo that big tag or the Shell Station, Sprint. IMDb and a lot of these things have to do with communication or delivering communication like UPS, like Nikon.
That's going to deliver communication in terms of photography. And so I thought it was pretty interesting how that really lined up with what some of these traditional meetings are for the color.
If you're on a freeway and that Denny's sign or the McDonald's sign, it's yellow and you'll see it from afar. And even if you're looking for maybe a place to eat that is local or that has more interesting, you pretty much know that if you go to Denny's or McDonald's, you know exactly what you're going to get.
And there's a certain reliability to that when you're on a trip that you just don't want to mess with potentially getting a crappy meal. So there's something about that yellow that is this sort of clarity, this sort of what you expect. Same with the subway logo, that sort of thing.
I often travel for work and it's interesting because I didn't really think about like the Hertz logo is yellow. There's just so many of these, the shell logo, the pencil. I didn't really think about these being yellow per se. But now that I look at them, I'm like, Oh yeah, those are yellow.
I forgot about that. It's very interesting how they're connecting color with certain emotions. So in this band of yellow, it's also the one at the top and sure does seem to be a lot of logos that use yellow as their primary color.
So I think it's really interesting and it has me think about, okay, so if color is used in this way thoughtfully. In a conscious way, how can we use color in a conscious way? This is in branding and in in a logo. What does this mean for us? So that's what I'm now thinking.
making with yellow
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Instead of building a logo, let's say we're making a blanket for somebody, right? And it's a baby blanket, we'll say. We don't know what gender it's going to be. We're just happy this baby is going to be here. What color am I gonna go to? Yellow. Yep. Yellow and green. Gender neutral in my eyes.
Not that I feel like any color needs to be assigned to any gender, but I always feel like yellow is a safe bet for babies. Probably because baby chicks, right? I don't know. That's where my head goes. You can always make it pastel green, purple, and yellow, and you're safe.
There's very few knitting projects that I've seen that are really in a bright yellow. I've seen gold. And I've seen golden colors, but that bright yellow, it would be so fun. I think in some ways it's hard to keep clean, like yellow, similar to white is a color that's going to show stains it's going to show every mark.
And I guess it's also easy for it to end up looking a little primary school when you have that bright yellow color. But tell me Katie, if I really wanted to bring in that lemon color, Into a piece what would be a suggestion on how I'd incorporate lemon yellow into let's say I'm doing a shawl, and I don't want the whole thing to be lemon yellow.
In that case, I usually go to, if you have this bright wild color, you need to pair it, or you would then maybe look at pairing, you don't need to pair it, you could pair it with something that's more balanced and calm and neutral. What I would use that for is probably more of a pop of color.
Maybe I would use that with blue. Blue and yellow is one of my favorite color combos of all time. Or yellow and gray is a beautiful color combination. Yellow and brown even if you want to get like back to the 70s. That was quite the color combination back then.
Especially if you have a certain design, even that could lend itself to ideas. Let's say you're doing something that has color work in it, but it's only like a smattering of it. So most of it is in a solid color, and then you have like an end piece that has a little color work section, some of my shawls do.
In that case, you could really highlight it, right? In that section. And so the rest of it is comforting and calming because it's a color you either don't really notice or it doesn't have that high frequency to it. And so the whole thing then comes down and you notice the yellow.
Cause even a lot of these logos, they're not all just. yellow for the most part. Sure. A lot of them will have black in there or gray or green or something like that. Yeah. Brown even UPS. So they do have a balance in there, but that yellow I think is really just to get people's attention. Yeah. I guess the I think about the Ukrainian flag, which is still really prevalent and how that is a bright yellow and then a sky blue.
Yep. And that could be a super beautiful beachy look or really gorgeous, like thinking of a summer day. I love that idea of. gray and yellow. That could be really pretty. It's really helpful to think about color combos with yellow and then looking at those two colors together.
If we looked at gray being calm, neutral, like peace, and then clear communication, opening the roads. You could do that magic with those two colors together. Or if we did like a blue, maybe it would be associated with healing or dependability or something like that with the yellow of opening the roads or creating that vibrancy.
So you could do some really cool color combo magic if the color is pretty intense.
Another great way to find something that will go if you're like, I just don't know. I don't know what will go well with this.
Bring that skein or whatever it is to the yarn store and walk around put it up against every other color You can find until you find the one that works for you. You'll know when you found it because you'll go whoo Whatever it is, and it might surprise you with what it really looks good with especially depending on the shade.
My favorite kinds of yarns are the ones that are primarily one color, but then they have a fleck of a really fun bright color in it. I used to have a sweater that was Like a tweed? Like a dark red, but then it had these little flecks of blue and yellow in it.
And it was the coolest because it was subtle, but you would see it when you were like, basically it was a red sweater. But then when you got close, you're like, Oh, there's little colors in there. That dimension makes all the difference. There's a lot of yarns out there that, are solid dyed.
I use a lot of that with the Ewe Ewe yarns, but many people, and back when I worked at skacel, we would often go for like the marled colors or the melange colors, which were heathered. So they were many tones of that color. And so it had a great sense of depth, more like looking at grass. as opposed to just picking one blade of grass.
It just added a more depth of field and that's a great way again to mix it up. Maybe it's a variegated yarn you end up finding and it has that yellow in there, but then it's also mixed with other colors so that it's not so overwhelming in that one scale. Yeah, or an ombre, I suppose you could also knit an ombre from one color to another and that would make it less.
Big bird, like. It looks like a sunset when you have a yellow ombre gradient yarn that goes from the one shade to the other, but it's still all yellow, right? It's just going from light to dark that added depth really adds that element of interest that I think lights us up.
So last week we talked with. Stephanie from tiny owl knits. And this has me think about what a perfect use of the color yellow to make the beekeepers quilt.
Wouldn't it be so pretty to use like a bazillion different colors of yellow and gold and all those different colors.
And then when you put it together, it really does look like honeycomb, which I'm sure if you Google. Beekeepers quilt, you'll see people that have done that. Yeah. But also the beekeepers quilt. You can do it in any colors it's one of those foolproof things you cannot mess up.
magic with yellow
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In terms of magic, when you are doing magic, when would be a situation when you would go to yellow?
Like I had mentioned earlier, when I need to open the path ahead of me, when I need cleansing, clearing, when I need to blast something out and say, I am stuck, I have the dust bunnies of my mind, I need to clear stuff out, I would definitely start with yellow.
So I may find a bright yellow candle. I may have some citrus lemon slices. I may have yellow lighting. I might even wear yellow or if I'm traveling I may be anointing myself with open roads oil that has those similar scents in it.
You can get things like that from madam Pamita's parlor of wonders or other magical practitioners. Oh, and isn't it so nice that the beeswax is like a yellowish color? So it already is yellow, right? And honey is that beautiful amber color. So yeah, great for sweetening things. Exactly. So these are the things to sweeten the path ahead to open those roads.
So this is one of the things I would use for yellow. Yellow can also be used for opening up communication. So if I am thinking about, gosh, I just had an argument with Katie or we had a weird communication. And I don't know what to do about that. I might use. color yellow to ease my communication with a loved one or with someone that I'm having conflict with.
So I might wear yellow. I might put yellow around my throat, even though my throat chakra is blue in the sort of visualization. I might bring that yellow because we Connect it with air and the idea of communication. I might wear amber. I might put on a amber necklace. I might really visualize, okay, I want to have better communication and own my communication and have that beautiful sweetening.
And that's a great use of honey, put honey in your tea, put honey and lemon in your tea. To smooth your voice and to have loving communication with someone that you're gonna communicate with. And so then when I talk to Katie about our podcast, I can be less of a jerk and more open and loving, which hasn't happened.
I'm just kidding, . But let's just pretend that I got all Aries. Yes, I got all Aries. If that were to happen, then I would do that and then we could talk about it and I could own my part in it and, sweeten our communication. Oh, I love that. Interesting.
So to wrap up our episode, I would love to hear, and I know you would too, Jim, from our listeners and watchers.
No. We are the only ones with ideas. Oh, just kidding. We don't care what you think. No. We are the only ones with ideas. If you have ideas about how to use Yellow, don't comment on this YouTube video.
We're not the only ones with ideas. You have great ideas. Yes. We want to know. Yeah. Do you like yellow? How do you knit with yellow? Do you use it magically? We are very interested on your take.
Drop us a comment in the YouTube video here, or you can always email us at knit a spell podcast at gmail. com. I think yellow needs some defenders since most people hate yellow. So defend Katie and her love of yellow. If you love yellow, we need you. Yes.
looking forward to next week. Yeah, me too. More colors ahead. Until next week. Bye, Jim! Bye!
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