lots and lots of writing about choosing a SFC project

My Knitpicks color cards arrived! I actually spent a good amount of time last night putting together a colorway for the Traditional Fair Isle Jumper I talked about last week. I think I actually put together something pretty nice, but I'm leaning towards not knitting the sweater. The thing is, while my substitute colorway with Knitpicks Palette is okay, I think that this sweater really benefits from the subtleties and heathering found in the original J&S. It's mostly greys and browns, and with those types of colors in the combination found in the pattern, I think the little things like hints of green in a grey or brown make the sweater special. I think it would look good with the plainer Palette colors, and if that were my only option I'd use them, but I think this may be a sweater I'm willing to put off until I can save up for J&S yarns. In other words, a pretty sweater can be made either way, and I don't want to discourage others from using Palette yarns for it if they want to make it. But my personal choice will be to go with a different pattern for the first time I use Palette to substitute a colorway. If anybody is curious about the color subs, drop a comment, and I'll share.

This does not mean the Sweaters From Camp knitalong won't happen. There are a few other patterns in the book that I think I'd be happier substituting with a Palette colorway. One of them is Snow Sky, designed by Ann Swanson. It's a two color sweater, with one light and one dark color. It's supposd to look like snowflakes, but they don't have the right number of points, so I may have to rename the pattern if I knit it. If I knit this sweater, I'd probably do it at a slightly tighter gauge. The pattern as written is 41" around and 25" long, which is a bit big for me. Gauge is 30 stitches/32 rows per 4", and I can comfortably go a bit tighter than that. I'd also lengthen the sleeves, to make them full length instead of 3/4. Actually, the pattern doesn't say what the sleeve length is, so it's possible her take on 3/4 sleeves will be full length on me.

Of course, I might decide to go a completely different direction. It might be fun to knit one of the tams. If I did that, I'd probably choose to also knit the Bright Color Basketweave Kid's Sweater, designed by Ann Feitelson. I know of a certain almost-toddler who would look really cute in it next winter, and I'd make it in an appropriate size to fit her then.

So yeah, I'm indecisive. The one thing making me shying away from Snow Sky is that if/when my Ingeborg yarn arrives, that will be another colorwork sweater that is bi-color. I've really enjoyed the colorful fair isle projects I've done so far, and worry that this would get a bit boring. Then again, they might fit my wardrobe better. I'm not known to be very adventurous with my clothing, unless I'm knitting it, in which case I'll go more adventurous for the entertainment value. I'm thinking Snow Sky would look nice in dark brown and cream, as opposed to the light and dark grey in the pattern. That would be a little different from the cream and black of Ingeborg, but not much. Hrm...