This could be two separate projects, but I’ve really tried and failed two different yarn combinations in a quest to make a single sweater. I don’t like how either of the combinations I used looked - I need to purchase yarn that’s much closer to the yarn used in the pattern rather than trying to shoehorn stash yarn into it.

In its first incarnation on my needles, the Shelby B sock yarns pooled into blobs of light and dark (which really, they’re designed to do and which would probably be okay in socks). I ripped back to the first row and knit again, trying to hold part of the color repeat out - like a long yarn tail at the beginning of the row - to vary it & make it not pool quite so much and it didn’t work because the repeats aren’t long enough to make that much of a difference. Plus with the increases, I’d have to keep doing it to prevent them from pooling again.

Also, the contrast in the colors with the lightest color (light brown/tan in Mme Rosemerta & yellow/tan in Chocolate Frogs) was too much & those light bits stood out too much. The second major problem with this incarnation is that the background color isn’t neutral enough to work. I was hoping it would work simply because it provides a solid background (in a color that I like a lot), but I think the background really needs to be neutral.

Enter incarnation #2: neutral-colored Nevada Rubertin (angora blend) and handspun. I could’ve used the sock yarn to stripe with again, but that didn’t seem to match fiber-wise - the upscale luxury of the angora needed either another angora or something equally special. The handspun seemed like a good idea to provide the color contrasts and a texture contrast both with shine from the silk blend in the yarn and the density of the yarn. I was going to stripe them in a pattern similar to Caramel, but I’m going to stop here & frog now because:

• The texture & density contrast between the hand spun & this particular mill spun is too much - they’re at opposite ends of the spectrum.

• The colors aren’t going to work for me. If the Rose Garden (pink) were green, it might work color-wise, but it’s not.