Hot summer tanks

We finally have a touch of summer after a miserable - and very long - spring. The Sangria II has entered a critical phase - I'm planning some surgery.

The weather has been too bad for photos, so I'll try to explain verbally. Sangria is knit in Schachenmayr's Micro in three colours, a burnt orange, a dark red and "Hot tamale" (see image). I started with orange ribbing and an orange garter stitch row, and then I have continued with alternating red and multicoloured stripes, with orange garter stitch in between. It may sound weird, but I think it's OK. I'm knitting in the round, and I have just come to the point where it's time to shape armholes.

Two problems:
- I'm running out of the orange yarn. My local yarn store only had a few shades of Micro left (this yarn is from last year) and of course no orange. I bought one ball of blue, but it's not the right shade and it would probably look very weird to change the colour of the garter stitch rows when the pattern is so regular. One solution could be to continue in red only from the armholes (it's a lovely shade and I have several balls left). This solution would only highlight problem numero deux:
- I don't like the orange ribbing. I would like to have red stockinette, with a picot edge, or possibly red ribbing. If I would knit a new "lower edge" of the tank, cut off the old one and graft on the new, I would have more of the orange yarn to do more garter stitch rows. This would make the tank better looking if I succeed, and it would be a complete disaster if I fail.

The safe thing would be to accept the orange ribbing, continue in red, avoid ribbing round the armholes and the neck, and to finish this weekend before the summer is gone.

Talking of tanks, Claudia has a very good post on knitted tanks, where she says:

Sweetie pie, you can't wear a t-shirt ALL THE @#%* TIME.

OK. Good point. But. When I look around at the sweet young thangs in their spiffy summer duds out on the street or in the fashion mags, I've noticed that the knitted tank is not a popular item. Is it only knitters that think knitted tanks are a good plan? Is this because they want to knit (or must feed the knitting addiction) year-round, but don't want to knit a wooly sweater in the midst of summer?

Yeah, so. SO! We want to knit, Knit, KNIT. Like this is a bad thing?

And here, my friends, we reach impasse.

Maybe I should abandon my plans for tank nr 2 and go straight for the cold season clothing...