What am I making? An afghan. When will I make it? Real soon.*

I am pastel phobic. Pastel allergic. I don't do pastels. I tried. I really did. But I kept coming up with muddy. Dusty instead of fluffy. The problem is, pastels all look like baby quilts to me - entirely too pale and pretty. To combat this, I gravitate to colors like Cloud Jungle, which, while subdued, hardly qualifies as pastel.

Still, I was all set to cry uncle. I was going to suck it up and settle. If I couldn't do pastel, surely I could manage pretty. In pursuit of pretty, I stopped at Knitche on my way home through the Saturday ice storm. They were unpacking an order of Lorna's Laces Shepherd's Worsted. I had gone in hoping for Watercolor. Instead, I bought some Tuscany. I went back Monday and bought the rest of it, along with a new contrast color. I came home fully intending to forget the other swatch(es). The Over There Afghan would rise out of this. Somehow. It is, undeniably, pretty.

Then I got a call from String Theory. While poking around at Dream in Color -- they have an in -- they found this. It's Cloud Jungle, but not really.

It came out too pale. (Imagine being the artist behind Dream In Color. You produce an absolutely beautiful yarn, but it doesn't fit the criteria for the color it's supposed to be, so it sits. I would have called it a new colorway and raced into production with it.) Happily for me, they didn't toss it or re-dye it or do whatever people with artistic sensibilities do before String Theory saw it.

Okay, you need a little back story here. At one point, I had envisioned using Cloud Jungle, despite it being kind of dark, as the main color with Shepherd's Worsted Denim as the contrast. The people of String Theory checked with Dream In Color, but they didn't have any on hand. String Theory called me to let me know. Not being in a position to wait 4 to 6 weeks for a new dyeing, I sighed deeply, and set off on the whole Odyssey thing described above, with a few Internet stops on the way. In fact, when String Theory called Monday, I almost told them no. I had the Shepherd's Worsted. Technically, they had fulfilled my request already. They didn't need to do another thing. Yet they did. Talk about above and beyond. So I said I'd be out and at least look at it.

The weather yesterday chewed rope. The advantage of driving over an hour in a snowstorm to look at yarn? The owner decides you're to be humored and let's you do all sorts of stuff, like show her the picture of the original project on your blog, and try to help you figure out what your daughter meant by "fluffy". Then she starts pulling contrast color yarn from all over the store, despite the fact that the first one she showed you was perfect. I suspect the fact that no one else was idiot enough to venture out I was the only customer in the store helped.

Let me introduce the latest swatch. In order from left to right, the Not Cloud Jungle, Cloud Jungle, Shepherd's Worsted Denim, Shepherd's Worsted Douglas Fir, RY Classic Yarns Cashsoft Baby Dk in SH 804. I'm not going to let on which one String Theory and I decided we like best for the contrast.

Before I make my preference known, I'll wait for Clare to peek in and tell me what she thinks. For all I know, she'll opt for conventionally pretty. In which case we'll have see if I'm feeling compliant, or if the demon of contrariness will possess me.

*That, by the way, is with apologies to John Lithgow and the Red Lectroids of Buckaroo Banzai.