an aubergine fair isle

as any knitter can tell i am knitting another fair isle yoke. my sister got envious of her daughter's and i thought why not knit another flawless one. she has a funny taste of colours and i had to deny her orange. i guess this can be a pretty and quite folklorish sweater. and i have been walking round town to do photo shoots on the progress. despite the rather thin wool and needles everything goes pretty fast. i have done the knitted up hem which i think i just such a wonderful detail to a sweater. and once i got the grip on the provisional crochet cast on it is no big deal. unfortunately i have no knitting buddies here who knows the other provisional cast on which actually looks easier if i only understood how. i am also going to work a bit on getting better on short rows. any advise is welcome.

fair isle yoke sweater

my niece's fair isle jumper is now a fo. i am not happy with my photography skills (where are brooklyn tweed or elli when you need them???) . the body doesn't have a moiré pattern in real life, but i am happy with the result. the shape, the drape and the yoke. and so is the owner. it has been a great learning process knitting this sweater and i am in awe of the pattern and very thankful to vogue magazine that made their own not seamless pattern for ez's original design, which initiated her to start her own business. since october i have knitted so many of her patterns and i have learned so many things about the skill despite having been a knitter since i was a young teenager and in love with sweaters knit on circular needles with unspun icelandic..

the sweater is made of alpaca from my favourite non virtual lys in copenhagen. the gauge is 25 to 4 knit on 3½mm addi turbos. i have 3 increase rounds using meg swansen's suggestions in the opinionated knitter. the upper sleeve is 40% of K. and there is no puckering. the main colour is a warm café latte, the yoke colours are baby pink, coffee brown, and greenish brown and a moss green. the inner hems are baby pink using the same method as jared did for his seamless hybrid. the only problem i experienced was trying to knit the sleeves on dpns. it seems i ended up with two different tensions in the beginning and the end of each needle. if you haven't knitted it yet, give it a try. it is great fun.

fair isle trials and tribulations.

i have made progress on the fair isle and i think the work is finally turning out to be a success. and it is certainly great fun to work on it. it is turning out exactly as retro/vintage as me and ulrika the recepient would like it to. the colours are even nicer than i thought at first and i will finish it tomorrow. but it has cost a certain amount of thinking and frogging. and i am not sure about the choice of yarn. the swatch is a swatch for my next project the lovely meg swansen saddle-shoulder aran cardi that i have been very much inspired to knit by jared and elli after seeing their fo's on theirr blogs and on http://zimmermaniacs.blogspot.com . i will post the finished sweater very soon.

fair isle trials

i have not been bloogging for a while simply because there has been nothing to blog about. or maybe there has. i have been experiencing problems with the ez fair isle yoke before even getting to the bit of colourwork. the issue has been a gauge issue. the gauge of the sleeves knit on dpns to be specific. the knitting was not very pretty because the gauge was not the same at the first and the last half of each needle. so i gave up and ordered a tiny circular addi turbo. that sort of solved the problem tonight. i could of course have knitted the sleeves on two needles but i somehow found that being a bit unfaithful to elizabeth....
i have also started a baby surplice sweater in porto cervo cotton from filatura di crosa in some of my favourite colours- lime and coffee.
but i have had most fun with the skye tweed i ordered from webs. i have been doing some serious swatching for the next project- the saddle shoulder aran cardi- from spun out/wool gathering. this is going to be a wonderful project. a little hot to knit in the summer but i will do it anyway because i am not happy with knitting with cotton. to be honest it is a waste of time mostly. the sheepfold pattern is especially satisfying. i love the look of it. i am sure it will not take that long and it contains a lot of possibility for learning. lifelong knitting learning. how lovely.
i have also ordered books. the harmony guide to aran patterns and ann feitelson's book on fair isle. i am establishing quite a nice little knitting library these days. hopefully i will soon pull myself together and order the barbara walker treasure and close my eyes to the fact that it may well be very expensive before it gets here. i think it is in the category must-have. i am afraid though that it will not be as fun to read as elizabeth's books which i read a little in every day. oh dear that woman is so clever and hilarious and very blunt.