Sweatergirl's piano bench cosy

Some of you may have seen Sarah's big entrelac bag - pre-felting, it fit over her piano bench (Scroll down to August 7). She's offering an Introduction to Entrelac class, and, since I haven't ever done entrelac and since the bag is super-cool, I thought I would sign up.

So a bunch of my knitting time has been dedicated to knitting the bottom of the bag in preparation for the first class on Thursday. There's nothing to photograph, as it is dark blue garterstitch. Boring. But I have been thinking about color selection a bit. I am somewhat restricted by my "Buy No Yarn Pledge"*. So I had to go to the stash. And although I have lots of worsted weight feltables, they are not all the same brand or fiber composition, so may felt differently. Sigh.

One collection that I do have is a Brown Sheep Naturespun Sport collection. I have about 20 colors, but some are neutrals (boring) or light colors (might not felt), so I came up with 8 colors (actually all bought on one shopping expedition) that I'll use in the bag.

I thought the bottom should be the darkest color - but the rest is open to discussion. Here are three renditions I came up with. What do you think? Each color will be one entrelac band...

Option 1	2	3

The yellow ("Sunburst Gold") is definitely the most prominent thing to my eye...

If you want to suggest another color combo, I'll make a graphic for evaluation!

Another option not thoroughly explored is to follow Sarah's idea (dark to light, with accent color as center band). I'm not sure if I have enough yarn, but that might be worth thinking about too - thoughts?

Other knitting notes - I've also been working on the Snail's Pace sleeves - only 32 more rows before sleeve cap shaping - ugh! And this sleeve (which already has a mate):

*although perhaps Sarah does not feel as bound by this solemn vow as I do...ahem. She's got some new red yarn from Threadbear, methinks. No, Sarah, my date of last yarn purchase is not "broken"! Of course, her stash is mostly in a closet, and mine is mostly in a 10x10 bedroom, so...well, you make the call.