MOAR yarn/ progress on the jumper

Look! I can haz Excelana! My friend Jen, a freelance knitting pattern editor, got five of these balls as a birthday gift for me when she was up doing some work with Susan Crawford (according to the gift tag, the other was a gift from Susan herself), but because I've been in Dorset and Jen's been travelling around working with people on patterns I haven't got my hands on it until today.

I've got six of the eight colours. Clockwise from top left, they are Persian Grey, Cornflower Blue, Ruby Red, Natural Alabaster, Nile Green, Saharan Sand My favourite is the Nile Green, which is the most perfect art deco eau de nil I've seen in a yarn, but they're all lovely. Susan chose the shades in her yarn to be right for knitting vintage patterns.

One thing that surprised me about the yarn was that I expected a rounder twist, but this is a good, sticky, not too tightly spun yarn that's going to be great for colourwork. Because yarn was rationed during the Second World War, apart from darning wool, recycling yarn was commonplace, and as one woolly would rarely yield enough yarn of the same colour to make a solid in a coloured shade there are lots of gorgeous colourwork patterns from the 1940s to be found, so not having lots of any one colour won't be a problem. I'm going to have to hunt down the perfect six-shade hat and glove design.

Of course, there's no starting something new until the Madeira jumper is finished. Here it is in progress. This is the front, the first part I've been knitting, so there's still the back and two sleeves to go, but I'm very happy with how things are going so far. The pattern has come out looking very lacy, and I will definitely need to wear a slip under it. Rather than go for a flesh tone, I'm tempted to go for something contrasting like rose or dove grey – what do you think would work?