I’ve had this amazing dark-yet-vivid, one-of-a-kind skein of deep bluey-green sitting on my desk for a couple of months … it’s almost as if my eyes craved looking at it. Knew as soon as I got it that it was far too lovely to be hidden away as socks, so it had to become something visible-when-worn like a shawl or scarf. At the same time I had this odd feeling that it would overpower and dull itself with its own glow if used alone so the problem then became what other colour to use with it (bonus being that two colours = bigger shawl/scarf = greater show-off-the-colour opportunities). So on to letting other skeins take turns to sit beside it for a day or two each to see how they got along. Nothing really zinged … anything too bright would compete too hard, dark neutrals were right out because they made the green vanish, light neutrals just washed it out. Red with green … well maybe in a world where everybody else isn’t brainwashed into thinking that every shade of green + red = Christmas …

But this red … it’s not the true classic Trek expendable security guard red that this colourway usually is … it’s got a coral tone to it. And it didn’t out-and-out clash in the side-by-side test but it grated on my nerves when I looked at the pair. We’re talking the optical equivalent of fingernails screeching across a blackboard. Yet as much as my vision kept flinching whenever I put the two skeins together, for some reason I kept putting them back together again, disliking the pairing, trying something else, and putting them back together again. Over and over and over.

Sometimes you have to ignore your eyes, listen to your instincts instead, and just cast on and see what happens. Because two skeins side-by-side are two big blocks of colour. The actual knitting in this case is much tinier patches of colour … skinny stripes outlining small rectangles with a few wider stripes here and there.

And instinct wins. It’s working. The red is bright but the green is glowing right past it. I think it’s partly due to that coral tone and partly because even though they’re the same yarn the green dyejob has a glossy finish while the red is matte.

This is gonna look fabulous. :-)

Update: Chart 3, Side A has an error in it … an extra column of squares that are all blank and throw the stitch count and patterning off. Ignore it. It’s easily spotted once you figure out that it’s the cause of the stitch count being off … it’s the fifth column from the left if you count along the bottom row of the chart.

January 8, 2018: Finally blocked!!! The green/blue yarn did bleed a teensy bit in the soak … it was such a slight tint to the water that I didn’t think anything of it but it does appear to have darkened the dark coral/red a bit. No problem as I like the resulting shade. Definitely not Indigodragonfly’s fault (their officially dyed yarn never does this) … the green is somebody’s practice skein from the Indigodragonfly annual Dye Camp and I would think it’s impossible for them to continually police every participant to make sure they fix the dyes properly.