Which-Crafts?

My hands needed a break from the sock knitting for a few days, so I thought I would give H. idea of practicing stranded color work on a bigger project a go.  I did a little reading and a little math and went to it -

I cast on for a simple hat using yarn that I already had, ribbed at the bottom and then color work for the body of the hat.  All seemed to be going quite well - except it was developing into the ugliest thing I have EVER seen.  I mean really really ugl; babies crying and dogs cringing - ugly.  And everything I did just seemed to make it uglier, I ripped back a whole section of color work and did a different pattern; it was just getting uglier by the minute.  So even though I had gotten all the way to the decreases at the top last night I gave up the ghost and just ripped the whole thing out and started again.

I am hoping that later I will be able to show off a finished product (and have a nice warm hat for winter) that is a little less ugly.

The good news is, that it seemed to me it wasn’t the actual technique of the color work that was causing the ugly-just the combination of patterns and yarn colors.  I am experimenting with how best to hold the yarn for the best looking results, holding both in my left hand and knitting both continental, or one in each hand and knitting one continental and one englisgh.  Knitting both continental seems to get me a more consistent tension, but is a bitch on the coordination.  Kniting one in each hand is much easier to do, but my tension is really different in each hand which is giving some wonky results.