OK, the thing about drawing spontaneously with needles and yarn is that it's a heck of a lot more work to erase than the flickering pixels.
Lesson learned: when stranding black yarn behind white over very long intervals, weaving it ever so sparingly is still too much because it shows. A lot. Actually I knew this, but opted for a bit of magical thinking regarding the power of blocking. Also some reverse logic about how maybe it wouldn't show so much once I stretched it over my head. Right. My deluded state extended right through weaving in all the ends, darning with white between the stitches and the black strands (not successful enough), and complete wet blocking. I'm not quite ready to tackle the frog job yet.
So I started this. 
Remember a few months ago (spring? summer?) Knitpicks had a very brief half price sale on the sampler pack of Andean Silk? I succumbed. The ill fated hat above was constructed from the black and white balls, and this is most of the rest. I'm working up a little cropped cardigan along the lines of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Kangaroo Pouch sweater (so named for the steek and short row construction method, not any pouch like attributes of the finished garment.)
The thing is, I really want a blue cardigan, and I have exactly three balls of blue: navy, turquoise, and sky. The trick is to arrange them so as to pull out the blue hues in the other colours, which I am doing according to the purely intuitive method of how the mix feels as I proceed. Spontaneity (as already demonstrated) is not without risk, but I find the emotional connectedness in this form of colourwork satisfying on a whole different level than mathematical planning. The one concession to quantitative reality is the kitchen scale, which helps me ensure I save enough of a given colour for the sleeves.
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