More patterning: through thick and thin

Besides having the constraints placed on the patterns by the number of rows they were, I had freedom given by the colours.

I have one colour that is in every row: the charcoal/black heather. That colour could be the background for every stripe, or for some it could be the foreground. I'd say that the "foreground" colour picks out the pattern, but I know that it is easy to let your eyes reverse it for you. The foreground is the colour that is marked in the pattern chart and the background is the one that's an empty square.

In this sweater, the black-background stripes alternate with the coloured-background stripes. This works out nicely because I have 3 colour groups, so they alternate. The thick pink stripes are surrounded by stripes that are playing by the opposite background rule to them. If the pink stripes have black backgrounds, then the framing short stripes have black patterns. If I did a black-background green row last time, I'm going to do a black-foreground green row this time.

I found in my swatching experiments last year that I liked when the background changed colour. I didn't like seeing a single-stitch-width pattern changing colour. I do, however, like the stained-glass window look of thick patterns when they're picked out in a changing colour, especially against a solid, dark background.

So, I made another rule to guide my choice of patterns: when the background colour is black, the pattern must be thick (at least two stitches wide) and when black is the foreground, it should be only one stitch thick.

That picture above shows a thin pink stripe with the pink in the background and a black pattern picked out (admittedly sometimes in thicker than one stitch, but predominately in lacy-one-thick) on top. The picture below shows the very next pink stripe (if you don't believe me, check out the intervening green and grey stripes) which is in a thick pink pattern on a black background.