In Which a Sweater is Completed, and Colour Selection is Discussed

I finished knitting my sweater this weekend!  Yes, I know it's a Tuesday, but it was a holiday here yesterday, so I had a long weekend to wrap up this one up.  The pattern is Tubey, by Cassie Rovitti, and was knit in Patons Classic Wool.

Now, I love the original, including the colours in the original, but I wanted to work with my stash, and, since I generally wear more subdued colours than those called for, a change was called for.  I had to sort out just what colours to use, and how to make good substitutions for the originals.

I bought some Dark Grey Mix to use as the main colour (instead of black), brought it home, and pulled out all my odds and ends of Patons Classic Wool and took a look at how they worked together.  I settled on my heathered colours, rather than solids, since the dark grey was also heathered.  They worked out fairly well together to look like a more faded and washed-out version of Tubey.

 The exception to the heathers was Aran (white), which stood in quite well for the Pea Green of the original.  Sure, white's not even remotely green, but it's as bright in my sweater as the green is in the original.  Plum Heather was a good substitution for the Eggplant, but it did take a little longer to sort out my remaining colours, as I had originally planned to put in a denim blue somewhere.  I had a hard time trying to decide where to put my blue, jade-green and pink.

To help me decide, I set out all my wool, then took a photo with my trusty digital camera, then used the camera software to turn the photo into a greyscale version.  I had already printed out my copy of the pattern in black and white, so, I could now compare the colour values directly to see what would work best.  In this context, the denim blue was obviously not going to work for me, as it was too close to the other values.  I also found out this way that the Jade Heather was a much better substitute for the Teal in the original, which seems obvious now, but I was trying to shoe-horn that denim in somehow, and the blue for blue had seemed like the right choice at the time.







So, having set aside the blue, I added Cognac Heather (rust) for the brown (which again seems obvious, but I had originally left it out, thinking that it was too close to the plumb), and used the Woodrose Heather (pink) in place of the purple, as the values matched up neatly.

I did up a swatch using the colours I had chosen, and since they looked rather smart together, I was ready for the sweater, which is otherwise knit as written, in the medium size.  I had a great time knitting this fun pattern, and find that it fits comfortably too.  I'm well-pleased.