Making Floats

Last night I embarked on a journey involving stranded knitting and the Checks and Charms Hat and Mitten set from Knit Picks. If you recall, I bought this kit back in July after I made an announcement in June that I was going to learn how to cable, knit fair isle, and knit intarsia by New Year's Day.

I've managed to cable and mom's ornament was a small stranded exercise, so I decided that one of my next projects should be the Checks and Charms set. This is what I worked up last night. I like it, but I don't think that the green shows up very well with the light purple. So what I thought about doing was switching the light purple and the green. Any thoughts?

I'm worried that the same combination will create the same problem only reversed. This is my first sort-of-like-a-fair-isle project, and I'm not very practiced at putting colors together. I picked out these five as I thought that the resulting colors would look nice together, but I'm worried that the hues are too similar between the green and the light purple to have good contrast.

Harkening back to my list (ha! I love to use that word), I've completed two of the three tasks that I set for myself, but I still haven't tried/learned intarsia. I have an idea though. A really big idea, since I haven't tried any kind of intarsia. I want to design a Dutch bunny pillow. I'm thinking a purple-blue (something a bit more blue hued than lilac) background with a black and white Dutch rabbit. This involves finding good yarn with the colors that I'm looking for and my dear friends, this is where I need your help.

I'm not as concerned about yarn weight although something a bit heavier than sock yarn but not thicker than a worsted weight yarn is what I think I want. However, I want a wool yarn that I can find in a good black and a nice ivory-cream colored white that will have good definition when I create my intarsia pattern. I'm willing to negotiate my idea for the background color, so I'm really more concerned about the other two. I even thought about using naturally colored wools for the black and white, but I worried about finding a yarn for the background color. Ideas are greatly appreciated at this point.

I know that I won't make my goal of learning intarsia by New Year's Day, but I would like to learn it soon so that I can enter my Dutch pillow at the National Dutch Show Arts and Crafts competition at the end of April. Hugs to you all for your help. :)