Playing with colours

Brrrrr!!  In my last post I may have thought that spring was on the way, but today it is grey, cold and blowing a gale.  So it seems just right to show the aran hat I made yesterday.  I had some oddments that went well together:

At first I thought I would use the plain blue for the rib and the short change variegated blue for the body of the hat.  I knitted the hat in the round on a small circular needle, and as I came to the end of the rib, I wondered whether I should go for stripes rather than contrasting sections.  Then I wondered what effect would be created if I knitted one row of plain, followed by one row of variegated yarn.  So I had a go:

When knitting in the round you can do single row stripes, which in fact don't look very much like stripes at all.  I liked this effect, so carried on to complete the hat:

Overall it gives a rather shadowy effect, which I think adds interest to the hat.  I shall play some more with this technique!