swatch and learn

This was actually supposed to be a number of swatches, testing out every possible combination of the red, burgundy and assorted brights that I have in my stash but once I got knitting it all sort of morphed into the one swatch. So, with respect to my Kashmir-shawl inspired Nine Lives, the above swatch contains (from the bottom up):
- a band of burgundy
- a band of burgundy and red vertical stripes (very difficult to distinguish)
- another band of burgundy
- burgundy and yellow vertical stripes, followed by red and yellow vertical stripes
- burgundy
- a band of red with a stranded colourwork zig-zag in eau de nil
- a band of burgundy with the matte silver beads placed on it
- red and light grey vertical stripes
- pink and red vertical stripes
- purple and red vertical stripes

I have learned a lot from this exercise: I don't like the yellow at all, the purple is too harsh and there is not enough contrast, I love the red and pale blue together, the light grey is too cold, the red and burgundy look best against each other in blocks of colour.

Right now I'm liking the pale pink as the second contrast colour. And I'm really liking the whole effect achieved by placing different colours against each other. Oh dear, Fair Isle here I come ...

And here on the right we have another swatch, this time for Jarrett. Yes, it may look like the greater part of a sleeve, replete with tubular cast-on and increases but it's not, it's a swatch because the gauge is wrong. ::sigh::