Hi, there, remember me?
Nah, didn't think so. It's been a while.
I've been knitting, though...
That's the body of my latest Dulaan sweater. Notice the fair isle band right above the ribbing. That's a new skill for me. Not that I haven't attempted fair isle before, it's just that this is the first time I feel like I can say I've really done it. The secret to keeping my tension smooth and the floats long enough was to keep the stitches on the right-hand needle stretched as far apart as possible. My previous fair isle attempts always puckered because they were too tight. Not this time, though :-) I'll do the same band on the lower sleeves and lots of similar stuff on the yoke.
The pattern is the seamless yoke raglan from Ann Budd's A Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, which is my Dulaan bible. (The fair isle pattern I made up as I went.) The main color is one strand of Reynold's Lopi Lite held together with one strand of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes. The two colors of blue are a bit closer together than they look in the picture -- the Lopi is accurate, the WotA is darker. The white is one strand of cream Lopi Lite held with one strand of some Bernat ivory [purportedly] merino worsted. The little dark squares are one strand of oxford gray Lopi Lite held together with one strand of Ella Rae wool worsted in camel (I didn't have a gray worsted weight and didn't feel like waiting until I got some). I'm making the sweater on KnitPicks Options size 10s, which is giving me a gauge of ~15 st/4".
I bought the Lopi Lite during a Webs sale last year, intending it for a Dulaan sweater. But it is soooooo harsh that I couldn't face knitting it nor forcing some poor Mongolian child to wear it. I'd had such good luck with the double-stranding thing on my last Dulaan sweater that I decided to try it again. The white and camel worsted wools were in my stash; I had enough of the WotA blue to know it was the right color but had to buy a few more skeins to have enough. (I heart WotA.) The resulting fabric is dense but supple, sturdy and warm, not snuggly soft but definitely an improvement over using just the Lopi Lite. I swatched on KP 10.5s to get the 3st/1" gauge that I intended, but the fabric just didn't seem quite right, so I went to the size 10s.
Given the rather harsh nature of the wool I modified my original plan for a pullover into a cardigan, reasoning that this sweater could function as a jacket. And I did knit it back and forth until the fair isle. But I just couldn't face doing fair isle -- for the first time *for real* -- flat, so I joined and began knitting in the round. At some point the weird look of the cardigan-style first 3" began to bug me so I sewed it together. If I had thought of it when I was shooting these pictures this morning I would have taken a shot of the seam -- it looks pretty good, if I do say so myself -- but I didn't so I can't. I'll try to remember when I shoot the finished sweater.
And now some gratuitous feline shots for your amusement.
Tabby keeps an eye on the neighborhood:
and snuggles the yarn:
