Color coordinated stashes?

I'm still spinning along on the yarn for the crazy scarf. As I'm knitting this thing I am truly coming to understand the desire for some consistency in the yarn weight (going from nearly pencil thick to thread thin in the space of a foot makes for some strange looking knitting). I'm learning that I like the randomness of the colors in homespun. A lot. And I'm getting faster with both the knitting and the spinning. I find I also like knitting with singles. All good.

But I'm going to be very, very careful about dying my own stuff from now on and making strange color combinations simply because I can. The color combinations in this thing are really starting to make me twitch (to quote a dear friend).

I could probably be further along, but I'm afraid to take it out in public lest someone believe me to be colorblind. I can explain to friends and family that this monstrocity is for a young lady with top of the line ideas but who loves outlandish dressing. It is a visual demonstration of outside of the box thinking. Oddly enough, it actually works in that capacity... but you have to be a very special person to pull it off. I could not.

With all my shopping experience from this weekend, I have come to realize that my best "style" is conservative and my best colors are cool but calm. Greys, plums, charcoals and blacks with some cool ice greens are best. Oddly enough a bold cherry red is stunning on me and will be used for punch in the wardrobe when I need to make a point.

So, I'm thinking that most of the stuff in my yarn stash doesn't meet this color scheme. I'm still going to knit myself a pair of alpaca blend mittens in maroon and white (because I have the yarn and my hands suffer so badly from cold), but when I get my wheel (you see, I've moved away from "if" as it seems that these days all things are possible), I will be spinning up a lot more greys than browns and teals rather than maroons.

Don't get me wrong. I have many family members and friends from whom I need to knit. Some of them look ravishing in warm colors and will benefit from my current stash of maroons, moss greens, and browns. My step-daughters-in-law both like greens and browns (I still need to make time to knit a pair of socks from some yarn for one of them). She might get them this spring.

Ken, like me, looks really nice in purples and tourquoise type colors. My sons don't care so long as it isn't pink.

So, I have some nice grey blue yarn on the way here from Knitpicks with a nice pattern for a cardigan sweater that I'm going to knit for myself. I would have spun the yarn myself, but I don't have that wheel on hand just yet. But I'm thinking I need to organize the stash a bit. Do a better job of planning future purchases; and only buy stuff when I have a specific project in mind.

Now, I reserve the right to change my mind after I have the yarn. All these kids for whom I've been knitting hats benefited from my mistaken notion that I could and should knit a black sweater for my youngest kid even though he warned me before I bought the stuff that he would not wear it. So the yarn is going for another use. And I'm using up odd bits of scrap yarn my mother gave me when I was a brand-spanking new knitter and she wanted to clear out her stash closet for those cool skinny stripes they like.

But I wonder if I have the control to do this? Can I resist buying a particular roving or yarn just because it doesn't fit my color scheme? Can other people do this?