Sea Shells

After having decided to make a Fan Kimono with the pink Drops Alpaca Virginia Knitting sent me, I decided to go ahead and do some test swatches. First, I tried it with size US 13 needles in an attempt to get somewhere near the gauge in the pattern I want to use. That did not go well. At all. Seriously, it would have qualified for a Yarnblob post.

Being a stubborn Capricorn, however, I did not give up. I did two more test swatches with different size needles, hoping to find one that would make the yarn behave and show off the shell pattern. This was done with US 9's:

I didn't bother doing a second repeat on the shell pattern because it just wasn't getting any more shell-like. Say goodnight, Floppy. I tried again with US 3's:

Lo and behold, a shell pattern. It seems the bigger the needles, the floppier this yarn looks. I think I'll go with the US 3's. It'll require some serious adjustment on the pattern, but the US 3's seem to tame this fuzzy pinkness better than the others. That, or I'll have to find a coordinating yarn to knit together with it. It's too late in the evening for my brain to function well enough to either look for a coordinating yarn or do any sort of accurate calculating, so I'll try tomorrow.