Christmas not Christmas colors

I love my blue Stopover sweater; I wear it a lot! The sweater is light as a cloud, and the Lopi yarn does not pill at all.

I knit it last spring in 8 days during the BangOutASweater KAL. I’ve decided I need another one, this time in red.

My first color combo made sense in the skein, but when I started knitting my swatch the black was too harsh. It was red, black, and one of the grays. Note how the black is the darkest tone in the picture above. I wasn’t happy, so I pulled out some pink and green from my leftovers to see if that helped. I wanted a cloudy feeling to go with my light as a cloud sweater.

We had an ice storm last week, and that meant I couldn’t get to the yarn store to pick another color. I almost got desperate and cast on with the green to go with light ash and red, but was afraid it would be too Christmassy.

On Saturday things were thawed enough that I could stop at the Knitting Bee and pick another color, as well as teach at For Yarn’s Sake. Here’s what I have now.

I love that the garnet red as the main color is the deepest tone, just like the lapis blue is on my original sweater. The light ash and white are like frosting at the edge. I’ll still use the spring green, but only as the color pops on the yoke (where the yellow is on the blue sweater). Just a little Christmas, but not overwhelming. I’m cruising along, and have finished one ball of red and am on to the waist shaping. Go, go, go!

What’s on your needles? Are you gift knitting? Done? I finished my Kilter hat for Mom, and it’s on its way and hopefully will be helpful on her trip to Antarctica. I want pictures!