I want to make my niece Alexa a sweater, and I’m torn between two colorways. So, I’m making myself two hats to test them out. (I like my swatches to be useful.) This is the first one - red-violets against grays, with gold as the “pop” color.

2/15/2011: Almost done with the ribbing. So far the violets are standing out against the grays, which is good news. I have had pretty limited success with opposing color schemes to date - something always kind of disappears in the middle where the contrast gets lower.

2/24/2011: Done and blocked! I love the pattern. Love the colors too, for the most part. I think there’s too big a jump between the Orchid and Cyclamen. Next time I’ll try Lavender instead. Or maybe a 5-color progression using both Lavender and Orchid. And while I like the Scotch Broom as the “pop” color with the Port Wine, I don’t as much like the Old Gold as “pop” with the Orchid - it’s too green, not yellow enough. Going to try Burnt Ochre next time. In general, though, I like the violet-on-gray so much that I’m not even going to bother trying the violet-on-green colorway that I was thinking of as an alternative.