Swatching Summer Berry Smoothie

So I knitted and knitted and knitted and ended up with a swatch of the Summer Berry Smoothie. Isn't it wierd to see the skein knitted up- its never what you expect is it??

I began with size 4.5mm needles then realised that my guestimation of the skein's DK weight was laughable so I switched up to 5.5mms and then thought that the fabric was still too dense so I ended going up to 7mms (didnt have any 6.5mms). Here is the swatch: No I dont want to hear any swatching teasing!! (You know who you are!!)

Observations:
Too stripey! I know if it was a wider fabric the stripes would be thinner but they would still be very obvious stripes.

Too much contrast: On one single I had the three lighter colours and on the other single I had the two darker colours so that meant that occasionally the lightest and the darkest colour ie the fuscia and the white would come up against each other. It makes too much contrast I think.

What to do? So I've spun up another where I did one single of the mid rose colour - In an attempt to 'unify ' the yarn and hopefully stop the contrast bizzo happening. Then another single where I did shorter sections of the four other colours- In an attempt to reduce the size of the stripes.

The result: Well it looks good. It's drying on the line at the moment so I'll show photos when its dry and I'll get it swatched up and see if my 'scientific analysis' was right! I know I probably could have just read a book or something and then I'd have had it all explained but there's nothing like learning the lesson yourself!! IS THERE!