A Trip to Fair Isle

I've been ignoring my sock-basket for a while now, knitting other things...

I just finished a project for my younger son, using up a 500g batch of natural-white Cascade 220 fingering that I won as a door prize at a knitting retreat a few years back. It was languishing in my stash until I got inspired enough to dye it up and do some fair-isle with it. I've never done a garment-sized fair isle piece before!

The dyeing worked quite well; I used iDye packets, which are super-easy to use. I ruined only 1 50g skein by dyeing it black - and then changing my mind and attempting to bleach it back to grey. Duh....mistake. Bleach did not produce grey, but fugly beige! But for the rest, I got a nice palette of colours; Toby wanted something with a brown background and kinda retro. 

[iDye'd Cascade 220 fingering]

Then I had some fun trying out different colour combinations for the fair-isle.  I drew up the chart in Exel and then used "format painter" to switch up the colour scheme a few times. Then I put the charts up on full-screen and stood away from them to see which one I liked best. Small changes make a big difference to the overall appearance, and it is really important to get a feeling for the overall effect from a distance! Notice obvious striping or strange shapes that leap out at you, and then make adjustments by rotating through your colour choices.

[Squint at this one and you'll see obvious horizontal striping.]

[Here, the white and yellow make strange shapes.]

 

[This is the one I settled on. The stars show nicely.]

When you've got something you like, swatch it!

The v-necked vest knit up surprisingly quickly, actually. Maybe I've gotten over my sweater-fear a bit? The colourwork helped, I'm sure, keeping me entertained. Also there were no sleeves, which cut down on the knitting time!!

Fair-isle tops usually involve steeking. I've done it before so no biggie, and I prefer a crochet steek because it provides such a beautiful finish and is easy to do. But I did stumble across some other techniques, which I think I might have to try sometime:

Kate Davies' "steek sandwich", which is reversible and would work nicely for a front band.

Tom of Holland's knotted steek, which is very minimal - weightless almost!

Fair-isle usually has minimal shaping, especially at the shoulders, which I don't really like. The fit is kind of boxy. I prefer some shoulder shaping, which is normally done back-and-forth...but I hate purling fair-isle! So I tried this technique which allows you to do shoulder shaping in the round. But I don't like the 3-needle bind-off done on the outside (really???!), so I did it on the inside instead. Hm. Didn't work out so well; I'd left long loops of yarn and had to bind off over top of them, which left an ugly finish on the inside of my vest. So I have not yet mastered this technique...

But anyways, am quite happy with the vest - and so is my son!

[Toby's new vest!]

Crochet Steeks

OK, the sleeves went well...OK, I had to reknit them a few times because they were too tight at first, and then I couldn't get the length right. But apart from that, they went OK. The bottom band is on, too. So...

I'm ready to open up the front of my son's sweater to make it into a cardigan. I've knit it all in the round so far, with an extra 7 sts at the center front for a "steek".

I've run a line of green slippery embroidery thread down the center stitch.

There are two options: machine steeking, in which you machine-stitch on either side of the center line and then cut the knitting; or crochet steeking, in which you use crochet stitches to secure the knitting. I did machine steeking on the side panels, so now it's time to try the crochet version! There's plenty of info on the interwebs, so off I go...

1. use a slightly finer weight of yarn (I'm using green fingering here)

2. run a line of single crochet up either side of the center line. You need to catch both sides of the little "V"s of each stitch. This is easiest to do if you fold the work in half and then push the crochet hook through, one crochet stitch straddling one knit stitch.

[single crochet on one side of the center line (marked in green running sts)]

[fold the work in half and it is easier to crochet]

3. once you're done with one side, work up the other:

[ on both sides of the center line...]

4. the last, scary, step: spread the knitting and cut the rungs of the ladder that appears, using small sharp scissors. Don't cut the crochet stitches!

[spread and cut...]

The crochet sts secure the knitting and make a very lovely finish. Much nicer than a machine steek!! I'm glad I did this for the front.

The zipper's the next step; there's again plenty of info on the 'net about these.

My tip: don't machine stitch too close to the zipper teeth. The wool has a way of catching in the zipper if you get too close. Stay a good 5mm away from the teeth. I made this mistake - because I'm used to sewing zippers into cloth, where you can get much closer - and had to rip it out. EZ in fact recommends hand-sewing zippers in, which is probably all you really need as the strength is in the zipper, not the stitching.