madtosh dilemmas

As I mentioned a couple of posts back, I bought 5 skeins of Madelinetosh DK in "Terrarium". 3 skeins were well matched, 1 was a little darker and 1 was a lot lighter.  As in, it almost looks like a different colourway.

I know everyone is raving over Madtosh.  And I get it.  This is the DK, and it's like butter.  The colours are delicious.  

Except when you are trying to get a jumper's worth of matched skeins. 

Nevertheless, it's special yarn - and it doesn't come cheap, so I have been holding onto it for some time now, not only trying to find the right project (I don't believe in *perfect* anymore, just right), but also trying to find something to match the yardage I have and to work with the variegated nature of the hand-dyed yarn.  

Grace, a free pattern from Rowan, caught my eye from a user's project page of Ravelry.  I would have clicked right passed it had I just seen the pattern on the Rowan site - it's in cream, and looks a bit 80's (and not in a good way), but there was something about the user's project that made it more sophisticated and stylish.  I can see it being a great layering piece for work.

Yardage-wise, I think I have enough.  According to the pattern, I don't.  But according to everyone's project pages, I do.  So I'll either have leftovers, or be tearing my hair out shortly

After much deliberation, I decided to use the lighter skein on the band mainly because I didn't want to alternate it with one of the darker skeins and have it stripe.  I really don't like that look.  It's one of the things that actually puts me off a lot of projects I've seen using this yarn, even.

This is where I'm up to so far.  

From this photo in daylight, the mismatched skeins don't look too bad.   Depending on which light I'm looking at it though, I feel like it's really obvious and I'm going to regret it once the top is finished.  The band is quite brown/khaki and there is only very subtle turquoise flashes.  The body is almost more forest green, and the turquoise is far more vibrant.

Every time I resign myself to ripping it out, I catch sight of it in another light and think it's not too bad.  Or I ask someone's opinion and they say "it's not noticeable, leave it/it stands out, rip it".

And back and forth I go...dilemmas of the first-world kind.

So I think I'm just going to push on through.  I plan to wear this with a low-slung belt anyway, so I'm hoping that will add enough distraction too?

But you know what will really rip me?  If I get to the finish and I have about a skein left over of yarn!