Incremental Progress

This looks very much like the previous yoke picture, but in fact it is not: here is a completed fair-isle yoke, about ten rows away from separating for the sleeves. I am pleased with the final product: there was no avoiding a sort of striped look, but I think I was able to balance simple peerie bands with more complex bands in a harmonious way. I'm not totally sold on the final band of pattern: the one that looks like lavender flowers with red centers at the bottom there -- it's lovely, but I am not 100% sure that it's in keeping with the other, more abstract and graphic patterns. I think that when it is on and I am not looking at it so critically that this will cease to be an issue.

If you look carefully at the photo above, you can see that there are stitch markers dangling from the cable at the bottom right-hand corner. That is because I decided after the yoke increases were done to switch to raglan-style increases until I divide for the arms. I don't think that it will be noticeable in the final product, but I think that it will make it easier for me to try on the sweater as I am increasing and divide at exactly the right point.

Anyway, if any of you are interested in the patterns that I put together for the yoke of this sweater, I have posted a link to my chart in the sidebar. It is not a sweater pattern so much as a very sketched-out "recipe," but since it took much longer than I thought it would to design my own balanced fair isle pattern, I though I could save other people the trouble.

Stay tuned in the next week for photos of a finished and blocked top-down arwen!!

No knitting content, but one hell of a tan.

I've been in Florida for the last week on vacation, finding it very hard to squeeze in any knitting with the gloriously hot weather.

Also, in a clear case of hubris punished, the super-secret knitting project I've been congratulating myself about had to be ripped back... way back... because of an egregious (and simple) mathematics error. It's clearly my fault for being too full of self-congratulatory arrogance too soon, and doubly my fault for not working harder during seventh-grade algebra. It happens to all of us, I guess...

Fair isle, foul weather

Here's some lovely pattern to look at. The weather is gray and gross, the lighting mediocre. But the fair isle patterning is looking quite good, I think. About 2/3 of the yoke is now complete, and starting to look like something. Here's an underexposed shot from farther away, so the shape of the sweater is more apparent:


There's one more dark peerie pattern to go, then a strip of tan-background pattern to balance the one at the top, and I'm done. With the yoke, at least. I dread the miles and miles of stockinette in fingering-weight wool to come. But I am hopeful that looking at this gorgeous yoke will inspire me to push on through so I can wear it!