Swatching…..

Swatching isn’t always my favorite thing, but I appreciate the necessity of it sometimes. I fell hard for the soon-to-be-released Sea Glass Tee pattern from Wool and Pine. A casual summery tee, which also happens to be a stashbuster? Yes, please! I really waffled on a color palette for this. I have loads of sock yarn minis and scraps, so did I want to go brights, or pales, or completely random? (Okay – probably not completely random. I’m not sure my OCD can do completely random.)

While I will freely admit that I have enough sock yarn bits and bobs in various colorway families to likely knit 2, if not 3, of these, I could not get a gray-purple combo out of my head so…….

I pulled this batch of colors I thought would work together out of stash. Most of them are from a 12-mini-skein pack from Miss Babs in her Yummy Sock called “Meditative Morning”, but I also tossed in more purples from various dyers, and then I also pulled one skein that’s a Potluck colorway from Hedgehog Fibres that was in my last club package from them. On first glance, it felt like that one HHF skein was really going to be WAY too bright – it’s got a lot of hot pink in it. But when I swatched, it actually was THE THING that kept this palette from getting too subtle.

My plan for the colorwork rounds, other than to alternate the lights and darks on every other row (which the pattern calls for) is to add in a round of the bright every 4th or 6th row, and use it for the neckline and cuffs/hem. I’m fully immersed in the final book from A Court of Thorns and Roses and I’m thinking of this as my “Velaris” colorway (or WWNW – What Would Nesta Wear as there are a lot of grays and gray-blues in this group, and of course violet for Rhysand’s eyes, right?)

My final decision will be whether or not I make this into a cardigan. It’d be pretty easy to do by adding in some front opening steek stitches. I kind of feel like I might get more wear out of this as a cardi over a tee for the summer, and could transition it into fall over a long-sleeved tee. I’ve got 2 more days until the pattern officially goes live, and I likely wouldn’t start this until June 1st anyway, so I can mull over that until then.