Plum Rain

It has been a month since I showed a single finished project.  Now I have 2 sweaters to show.
They were from the same pattern I wrote up.

I'd been showing the first one with photos in progress.  Originally I had the color of beige or sand in mind. Somehow when I looked into my stash, I grabbed the bright, Grasshopper of Madelinetosh Tosh Sport. I knew 3 skeins would not be enough to finish the sweater, but that didn't stop me.

I had 2 choices, buy more and pray the new one would miraculously match these skeins that sat in my possession for 4 years.  Or, I could just add another color to it.

I added Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in dusty pink to complete the body.  The result?  kinda funky but kinda awesome. If I'd seriously planned out my color choices, these two might not be the logical combo. And I love good surprises.

Paul said the dusty pink color was close to skin tone that I looked like wearing a cropped top.  O...K.....  But the body length is actually shorter than my usual designs at 13" from underarm.

I'd mentioned before, I'm not used to hand dyed yarn for sweaters.  So the striation in Tosh Sport seemed a bit much for what I had in mind.  So I decided to knit another in solid color with slightly longer body as well.

There must be something about careful planning and selecting colors that just doesn't jive with me. I picked pale baby pink! I hate wearing baby pink!  Dusty pink is fine, but not baby pink. The yarn was Needful Cara. It's a rather nice yarn, just a terrible color on me, no wonder it sat there in the drawers for 6 years.  And here I was, knitting a whole sweater with the color that would be ghastly on me. My reasoning was I could over dye it.  There was also something crazy going on, I was actually curios about how bad would this baby pink look since I couldn't even remember the last time I wore it.

Yes, it was bad. I simply hated it. It looked like pajamas. Nothing against pajamas, I always lounged around in PJs as soon as I get home. In fact, I have a set of pink old PJs, But it's not for a sweater going outside of the house. So I continued on with over-dyeing. It was a mixture of all Bs, Brown, Black, Blue and Burgundy. It came out not super even, but I absolutely loved it!  It looked like faded, distressed tee shirt. Totally my color!

The style was boat neck, raglan sleeves pullover, with twisted stitches along the sleeves and cable/lace motif that I made up at the cuffs, gentle short rows along the hem to make it slightly longer on the back.

Did I mention how much I love the over-dyed color?