Must Stripes Match? (CPH Colorway)

CPH stands for Central Park Hoodie (see "Stash Time"), and yes, I, too, have succumbed to the call of the CPH as have a bajillion other knitters throughout the knitblog-world. For the uninitiated, the CPH is a project from the Fall 2006 KnitScene magazine that has captured everyone's interest. Normally, I am one to buck trends and gallop to the beat of my own drummer, but I couldn't resist this.

Last week, I joined the CPH KAL. It's my first official KAL, though I've submitted to the KnitGrey's KAL and Socktoberfest. (Yoohoo... sign me up, please? Pretty please?) I also visited my LYS, Fiberworks in Toledo, for yarn and more needles (one can never have enough, can one?). Rather than blab on about it, let me SHOW you...

Here's the yarn (yes, the colorway does vary):


Here's the first four inches of ribbing and one round of cable pattern that I did last night on the back of the CPH. Yes, I'm using 12-inch needles because that's the longest available bamboo needle Crystal Palace makes:



Here's a close-up so you can see the really cool color shifts:


And here's my question for you expert knitters out there...(those of you on the CPH KAL might recognize this question and post, sorry)

I knew the colors would shift. I'm okay with that. What I failed to remember when I cast on for the back was that the back is twice as long as the front pieces. The striping will be completely different on the back than on the front--IF I continue on this way. I know that if I start each front panel using balls that are wound similarly (meaning the center pull on both is browns, outside is blues), they'll resemble each other. So. Do I resign myself to having mismatched "striping"? Or, can I resolve the issue on the back so that the stripes "match"?

Here's my initial thought, tell me if I'm on target. I could use two similarly-wound balls to knit the back. I could:

--knit the first half of the stitches with one ball, then pickup and knit with ball #2 to the end of the row.
--knit back with ball #2 to the center, pickup and finish row two with Ball #1.
--repeat, repeat, repeat

Sounds like a huge PITA, but would that solve the issue? 'Spose the only way to find out is to try it. *SIGH* It knits up rather fast so I won't lose that much time on it.

Off to knit. I will bring the results of my experiment when I return.

posted by Jeanne @ 7:17 PM