Too much of a good thing

I can find colors I like within every hue of the rainbow-- but that doesn't mean I want to wear them all at once.  So unfortunately my enthusiasm for this Filatura di Crosa "Dusk" yarn, colorway #5, waned as I knit along and revealed color after color which had been hidden inside the skein.  You may have guessed (since I'm showing a photo here) that this will not be one of the swatches I will be sending along with a design submission to a magazine.  It's oriented this way because I had the idea of working the piece sideways so that the stripes of color would be slimmingly vertical.  (Maybe this concept would work better with a different yarn; it doesn't seem fully successful to me in this case.) 

As someone who doesn't use much variegated yarn, this specimen was interesting for me because the color is not a simple repeat; several strands of yarn which change colors at different rates have been twisted together, so that the overall color effect is ever-changing, with more heathered hues giving way to brighter sections.  I personally would have been happier with a much narrower range of colors, such as those shown in these two snippets of the photo above.

However, I didn't give up on finding a way to use this stuff:  I then tried combining it with a solid color yarn, the idea being to "tame" all those rowdy colors.  Perhaps it was largely the stitch pattern that left me saying "beh"*, but once again, running the entire ROYGBV gamut (this time with colorway #4 and a greenish instead of pinkish background) struck me as, I don't know, overly exuberant.  The colors pictured below are quite muted compared to the real thing, by the way.  As you can see from the photo below, I was still looking for a way to use those color changes in a vertical direction.

(If anyone is interested, the stitch pattern is "String of Purls"-- cute, eh?-- from Barbara Walker's 2nd Treasury.)

*"Well?" in Italian.  Gotta play Scrabble in Italian sometime, so I can use "beh," along with "boh" (who knows, I don't know), "ni" (neither yes nor no), "ne" (some of, of them), "ci" (us, there), "voi" (you plural), "noi" (we)....

Comments

[Annette]

I love the last swatch!

Signed: Your newest fan

[SoKnitpicky]

I'm not much of a variegated yarn person myself, but I really like the effect you discoverd using the string of purls stitch!

[connie]

I too like the last swatch. It's very cute!

[Typesetter]

I use quite a bit of variegated yarns, but often they are a bit "too" variegated. Fun in small amounts but honestly often overwhelming in a full garment. One way I like to use a garish variegated is in borders. A vareigated border in a solid color garment (usually dark) can add sparkle to the whole thing without getting overpowering and also keeping it all simple and straightforward.

[Anne]

I think you should get rid of that *awful* yarn right away! Here's my address . . .

[Robin]

Love it! Like how it shows up against the background knit.

[Eileen]

I would like to have the string of purls stitch pattern...can you help? Thank you.