I used to puzzle; why will knitters choose a pattern based on the photography sample’s color, when most yarns come in at least 8 hues, and most yarn stores have staff that are good at substitution? Then I realized that I have at least 2 projects that look really similar to the original, and I knew why.
I made my daughter a Sunstone hat for the GAL in 2019, and started an Oakenshield sweater for my son (then my carpal tunnel acted up and I’ve been resting my wrists, I’m half a skein away from the underarm split in that project though.) Since I wasn’t knitting for my own whimsy, I asked the kids what colors they wanted, pulling up the WEBS site to order their yarn.
Matt’s sweater wound up in a brick red, because that’s the color WEBS had enough of (and he already wears a lot of that color, though he did want to branch out into blue/green.) It’s not the same brown as the original. but it reads brown if you look at my knitting bag in dim light. Very similar to the original. My daughter could only see her hat in the same sunny color as the original, because of the name. A few years ago, I knit some Perivale socks for her tutor, and she picked a pattern that was shown in the same color as the yarn she’d asked for. So that’s why. We are knitting in community, and love does not insist on it’s own way. Or making people stretch their design skills when making choices in the first place is hard.
Still, next time I knit for other people, I’m setting my monitor to greyscale when they look at the pattern, they can think color once it’s time to pick the yarn. Humph.