So, this whole thing kicked off because I had this specific color stuck in my head. Not just any purple, mind you. It was this deep, almost dusky, kind of vibrant but soft violet. Arghavani, that's what I started calling it in my mind, though I guess that word means more than just one shade.
First, I thought, easy peasy. I’ll just find it on a color wheel or something. Fired up the old computer, opened up some design software. Clicked around. Picked a purple. Nah, too bright. Another one. Too dull. It was like trying to catch smoke. I spent hours, days even, just nudging those RGB values, tweaking the hue, the saturation. Nothing felt right. It was always a bit…off. Too digital, maybe?
Then I figured, okay, maybe the screen is lying to me. I should try real stuff. Went out and bought some cheap acrylic paints. Red, blue, a bit of white, maybe some black. Started mixing. Oh boy. What a mess. My desk looked like a unicorn had a very bad day. I got some purples, sure. Some were muddy, some were electric, but none of them were it. None of them had that specific… feeling. That’s when I knew this wasn’t just about a color code.
You see, there was this scarf. Someone very special gave it to me, years ago. It was made of this really soft wool, and it was this exact shade of ارغوانی. I wore it all the time. It wasn’t just a scarf; it was like a hug, a memory, you know? And then, one day, I lost it. Just like that. One moment it was there, the next, gone. I retraced my steps, looked everywhere, called places. Nothing. It vanished.
That’s when the obsession with the color really took hold. I think, deep down, if I could just recreate that specific purple, maybe I could hold onto a piece of what I’d lost. Stupid, right? But grief does weird things to you. It wasn't really about the scarf anymore, or even the person who gave it to me, not directly. It was about that specific shade of purple that held all those feelings.
So, my quest for ارغوانی became… chaotic. I started buying things. If I saw anything remotely close to that color, I’d grab it. Little scraps of fabric, skeins of yarn I couldn’t even knit with, weird looking stones. My room started to look like a shrine to the color purple. I’d take photos of sunsets, flowers, even bruises, if they had a hint of that violet. I even tried describing it to friends, artists. They’d nod, show me swatches, and I’d just shake my head. "No, not quite." They probably thought I was nuts.
I bought books on natural dyes. Figured maybe it was an organic color, something I couldn’t get from a tube or a pixel. I read about murex snails and ancient Phoenicians. Considered growing indigo, even though that’s more blue. It was a real hodgepodge of efforts. I had notes, samples, failed dye experiments all over the place. My search history was just variations of "deep violet," "dusky purple," "how to make unique purple."
In the end, did I find it? The exact ارغوانی from the scarf, from my memory? Honestly, I don’t think so. Not perfectly. I got close, a few times. A certain mix of watercolors under a specific light. A digital swatch that felt right for a fleeting moment until I looked at it on another screen. But the thing is, I realized the search itself became the project. It wasn't about nailing a hex code. It was about chasing a feeling. That ارغوانی was more than just a visual; it was an echo.
And you know what? That’s okay. I never found the scarf. And I never perfectly matched its color. But all that searching, all that mixing and collecting and failing… it kind of helped. It was my weird way of processing something. So now, when I see a deep, rich purple, I don't just see a color. I see the whole crazy journey. And sometimes, that’s more valuable than finding what you thought you were looking for.
