Nom de Plume; Or, How I Like Palette

Pattern: Nom de Plume - Leggies
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Yarn: KnitPicks Palette (Cream - 2, Suede - 1, Brindle Heather - 1, Doe - 1, Camel Heather - 1, Bark - 1)

I really love the look of swatches of colour. I have, indeed, since I was a very wee one. I can recall tagging along with my dad to the hardware store, gleefully claiming various bright and tempting paint sample cards for my very own.

The same impulse takes over every time my new KnitPicks catalogue arrives. Hooray! I think.

I mean, mostly, the colours and yarns stay the same, but oh, the swatches! The hues! The Palette!

And so, I have a bit of a Palette collection - not every colour, certainly, but many. Probably more than I'll use any year soon. But my big plans most recently included creating peacock feather inspired knits using the same intarsia chart, but with different colour schemes.

First came the cream/natural shaded leggings.

They mostly turned out how I wanted - though I was disappointed by their lack of willingness to stay up.
The remedy came in the form of some savvy ribbon usage, threaded along the inside top ribbing.

I knew I also wanted a more true peacock-esque scheme, and tried that one out on the arm warmers.

Pattern: Nom de Plume - Arm Warmers
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Yarn: KnitPicks Palette
(one each of Black, Suede, Cornmeal, Teal and Navy)

These ones, one the other hand, turned out just as imagined. As per usual, I'm too lazy to add thumbs to the armwarmer tube itself, and instead just left some cast off stitches as an opening.

I tried to plan out the colour placement based on the KnitPicks site. Dicey, I know.
And verily, mistake I did make.
There's supposed to be a third colour surrounding the central "eye" of the feather. But the yarn I chose for that purpose, Pool, clashed something awful, and was thus axed from the knit.
You can see the missing part much better on this close up.

I'm planning on publishing the chart, and if anyone wishes, I could give the pattern(s) a go as well.

I'm also hoping that some day I push myself to make the fiery orange ones and soothingly green ones that I've sketched out in the numerous balls of Palette still sitting patiently in the yarn city that is my cedar chest.

But for now, I'm off to knit on my new knitty crush - the sock yarn sweater.
More to come on that one soon!