Don’t the colors remind you of peppermint candy cane ice cream?  Here I am experimenting with various color combinations, absolutely addicted to color swatching at the moment with more easy to finish fair isle hats.  In my excitement, I didn’t have the patience to make the top and bottom half of this one match.  I like the snowflakes on the bottom and hope to make another so the top half will match the bottom half better.   I was also trying to experiment with different peerie rows for the center and wasn’t too happy about the design or color for this one but I think it might have been at least the best color out of the ones I had on hand.  The bottom half was my big “test” to see if my fix for the snowflake would work, by adding a peerie between the snowflakes so the fabric wouldn’t ripple like the one below, and it worked.  After I finished this hat, I felt confident that I could move forward with the cardigan whose design I took this from by Debbie Bliss in the Vogue Knitting 12/07 issue.  Once I was convinced this would actually work, I began to experiment with the actual colors from the sample in the magazine.  It was very tricky because the colors were labeled by color in the pattern, but are actually sold by number in the stores and online so even eyeballing a shade card was hit and miss.  You can see what I ended up with in the photo on the next post above this one.  One thing I learned is that these colors are incredibly versatile with the Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino, and very convenient for tone on tone with blues, pinks and greens in particular.