Lacy pattern in dark, variegated yarn?

[rivenwanderer]

I'm contemplating knitting a Damask shawl from Malabribo Sock yarn from my stash--the Abril colorway, which is a fairly dark purple-and-navy variegated thing. (Some reasonably representative pictures found on Flickr: one, two)

I fell in love with the Damask pattern because of the lovely curving stitch pattern. Somewhere along the line, I got the idea that if you want a stitch pattern to show up, you can use varigated yarn, or dark colors, but not both. How true is this? Should I seek out a lighter and/or solid yarn for my Damask and use the Abril for stripey socks or something? Or should I go for it?

Comments

[ginny_t]

I think it'll work nicely. I wouldn't do a pattern like that in a yarn with any more variegation than the Mmmmmalabrigo has, but I think it'll be good. The pattern will show differently in a darker yarn than a lighter one, but I don't think that's necessarily a drawback, just something to know going in.