Friday, March 28, 2008

Conundrum

This wee sweater and I are at an impasse. You see, there's not enough brown yarn left to knit a normal length body. Whoever on Ravelry labeled their sweater as only using one skein of Cascade 220 was lying.

baby sweater

I've narrowed it down to the following options:

1.
Knit cuffs and hems to match the length of the yoke and call it an avant-garde sweater.

2.
Finish the sweater with normal cuffs and hem and call it a cropped, short-sleeve sweater. Or maybe a shrug. Do babies wear shrugs? I don't think mine will...

3.
Frog it and knit a yellow sweater with a brown yoke. I have two skeins of yellow, so no yarn shortage worries there.

4.
Frog it and knit a completely yellow sweater with no brown since the brown is ugly and no baby should be caught dead wearing said color. Burn brown yarn. Have I mentioned that it's actually a brown/black tweed?

Help me out here people, I have no fashion/design sense. Is the brown yarn honestly ugly? I think it looks ok...but I'm not sure. Right now I'm leaning towards option 1, with options 3 and then 4 close behind.

10 comments:

Happily Knit said...

Oh no....I hate that!

This is obviously open to personal interpretation, but I've always been a fan of yellow sweaters on little ones. I choose #4 but put a less negative spin on the use of brown ;)

OH! and thank you so much for the birthday wishes! I had a fantastic day (and night)! :)

Soxophone Player said...

I think the brown makes the yellow really pop, more than if the yellow was on its own.

Goethe's colour theory quoted in Deb Menz' book, Colour in Spinning, suggests a weight of 3 for yellow vs weights of 6 for red or green to achieve "colour balance".

So with yellow/brown you would use 2 twice as much brown as yellow.

Anonymous said...

If you have the time I say frog it and knit a yellow sweater with a splash of the brown, or no brown at all if you have enough yellow.

Emma said...

I would go with option number 3. Good luck!

Properly Done said...

This sweater reminds me a lot of Elizabeth Zimmerman's baby sweater found in her knitter's almanac, which can, indeed, be done with one skein (though it's close!) What about knitting the first inch or two around the neck with brown/black, knitting the body in yellow and then the cuffs and waist band in brown/black? Though it's such a beautiful pattern that perhaps just having one color would allow the pattern to really shine. Looks great!

Ye Merrie Quilter said...

I'd follow the above advise and use just a little bit of brown at the neck and wrists with the yellow. Or heck, do a zig-zag stripe across the chest and call it a Charlie Brown sweater! That would be cool! Otherwise, I would say that while not all babies should be required to wear pastels, good solid color--red, blue, green--is better than brown. The brown would make nice mittens or a hat. :)

sko_G knits said...

i love the brown. depends on the baby though, if it's more of an "upscale sophisticated ivy league baby" or is it a more of an everday people's kind of baby?

to be safer though, it might just be easier to reverse the coloring, brown trim with yellow as the main color.

Jessica said...

Hmmm... I'm not a big fan of yellow, but if that's what you have the most of, why not go with that? Besides, aren't babies supposed to wear "happy colors", not that I know what I'm talking about or even what that means!

brandilion said...

I think either color is great, but I don't like them together. If you have enough of the yellow, make a yellow one.

Faith said...

Either color is fine on it's own, but personally, I wouldn't mix the two. It's a cute sweater though!