Gearing up for Girasole

I've been spending a little too much time on Ravelry lately (school blocked both Molehill Empire and Plurk, so I have nothing to do all day but WORK!), and I blame that time for making me cast on another project. A project that I have no business beginning because I have too many other projects waiting to be spun or knit. But honestly, how can you not cast on for this:I humbly present to you Girasole, by Jared Flood (this pic and the one below of the same blanket are both his and are used here without his permission which is why I'm crediting him for the photo now. Sorry, Jared!)


It's a blanket done on size 10.5 needles. It's big - 72 inches in diameter. It will probably take me years to complete. Although, the other Jared Flood pattern I've done (Koolhaas) was probably the quickest project I've ever done start to finish. He is a master of gorgeous and fun-to-knit patterns. When I first saw this pattern on his blog, I knew I wanted to do it. But 1,800 yards of yarn (that's more than a mile!) is expensive, even in cheap acrylic. And I didn't want to do it in cheap yarn. I wanted to do it in true wool yarn. Regretfully I put it on the back page of my queue to start only if I landed a mile of pretty yarn for free.

Then one day last month I posted pictures of my craft room and my yarn stash. I felt sorry for myself for how little yarn I had. The only natural (non-acrylic) stuff I had were several skeins of 100% wool my father has given me over the past few years. He picks them up random places and since I have no idea what do to with it all, I just store it.

And then it hit me.

I have EASILY enough yarn for Girasole if I use that stuff! The wool is great - not the softest, but lots of loft (they are two-plys) and warmth. Perfect for a blanket. The skeins are in three different colors of natural sheep's wool - cream, grey, and chocolate. Perfect! My blanket will have visual interest as I switch colors and I will get to use up all the great yarn my Daddy bought me. I love my daddy more than anyone else on the planet (excluding my husband and cat, of course. It's a three-way tie). Here's the yarn:
Sorry for the crappy pic - the light isn't great in here today. So now I have decisions to make: Namely, which color do I put where? I will have to switch off when the charts change. But do I start with a light center or a dark one? I have more of the cream yarn than the other two colors, so I should probably use that for the edging (I have a nearly completed pair of wool socks I can frog if I need to for more yardage). After a couple of days of thinking, here's where I think I'm at, color-wise:
The darkest yarn (chocolate) will go in the center, where the seeds of the sunflower would be. The medium (gray) will be the petals and the spiral. If I run out of gray, the chocolate can cover that section where the spiral turns back on itself (I'm hoping that doesn't happen, because I think too many color shifts will look like shit). The cream is for the V-pattern, as that is the largest section of the blanket and will therefore take the most yarn. The edging I'm going to wait to see how much yarn of each color I have. I'll blog about it again then to elicit your opinions on the matter.

Actually, I want them now. What do you think? Are the color choices a good or bad idea? Any help you can give is GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!