Swatching for the Christmas Tree Skirt

My white Wool from the Andes arrived on Friday from Knit Picks. It will be paired with the Christmas yarn to create a Christmas Tree Skirt.

I bought 11 skeins because I've learned that one can never have too much yarn. Just in the past year, I've run out of yarn twice. In the hopes that I never face that challenge again, I swung the pendulum to the opposite side and bought 300 more yards that I need. True, it's a bit extreme, but the last yarn shortage is still fresh (and painful) in my mind.

Of course, the first thing I did with the yarn was knit up a swatch of plain stocking stitch. Sitting next to the Christmas yarn, it is perfect. It is plain and ordinary, letting the hand-dyed yarn take the spotlight.

Because I refuse to knit an entire garment in stocking stitch (I simply must sneak in some cables or yarn overs), I have been tinkering over the past few days with a pine tree cable. What do you think?

I took the pics at night, so they're not the best.

Now starts the fun part: drawing the schematics and calculating the stitches. My goal is to cast on later this month.