Say, that is one heckava dramatic blog post title, doncha think?

Ahem.

As you may know, Mason-Dixon Knitting started their 2019 March Mayhem competition on Friday. Head over to that link if you are not familiar with this phenomenon. In brief, it is a knitwear pattern competition modeled on March Madness every other tournament on the planet.

I printed out the bracket sheet yesterday and started looking at patterns. Not that I wanted to knit a sweater, you understand. I was just looking. Simple curiosity, nothing else.

One thing that I have noticed in past years — Kay and Ann started this tradition in 2017 — is that my personal favorites got eliminated fairly quickly. Not a surprise, given the wide range of patterns and knitters out there in the wild. Nevertheless, I started at the upper left corner, above, and began looking at pullover patterns on Ravelry. Just curiosity, right? Nothing struck my fancy until this one — Chaika.

Even then, I was not attracted to the pattern AT ALL — except that multiple knitters who had made one commented on how fast it was to knit (worsted yarn on US#10 needles); that DEFINITELY appealed to me — until I clicked from details page to the projects page and saw this one.

Those colors! Absolutely no relationship between them except that the knitter chose them and THEY WORK!

I hurried over to Webs and started looking at Malabrigo Rios colors. Why that particular yarn? Because I had been thinking about it recently and all its astonishingly lovely colors, not to mention what a delightful yarn it is to knit.

I knew, however, from looking at all other Chaikas on Ravelry that choosing the right colors was critical to this sweater being a success for me. And it was not so much the specific colors as it was the relationship between them. If one yarn were variegated, the other, solid color absolutely positively could NOT pick up a color from it. It had to be 100% contrast. The two yarn colors had to work like the ones in the chartreuse / black&whitetweedy one, above. They had to contrast mightily and somehow have the same visual weight. I was pretty sure that NO variegated yarn would work the way I wanted this sweater to work.

Eventually, I settled on this deep purple tonal for the body. I have been thinking about making a purple sweater someday. That day is coming sooner than I expected. The color may actually be more gray-black with a purple overtone. Either way, I think it will work.

I will double-strand these two for the collar/neck. They are Kill Bill from Sweet Georgia, left, and Knit Picks Stroll Tonal sock yarn in Poppyfield, right. 

And so, in one fell swoop, I demolished both my yarn fast and that New Year’s goal of finishing WIPs*. Led astray by temptation to madness, yep, that’s me!

I will NOT be led astray to drop the Fairfield cardigan currently OTN, however.
The Chaika must wait. The Chaika must wait. The Chaika must wait.**
(Keep repeating that, Kat™.)

* You already knew I had been led astray by that Chartreuse/Fairfield cardigan. Chaika is just the final, killing stroke to that goal.

** The yarn is ordered, the pattern is downloaded. The Chaika must wait. The Chaika must wait. The Chaika must wait. (Keep repeating that, Kat™.)