Not much, already

I have been meaning to make swatches with some yarn I have about.  However, I have not made anything.  It just wasn't a new-project kind of weekend.  I re-read some old books in which I very much knew who dunnit.  

I have been reading "The Knitter's Book of Yarn" and learning things.  My yarn of choice for this sweater has so far been Briggs and Little.  They're 100% wool and they have lots of colour.  When I say lots, I don't mean as much as a good Jamieson's, say, but there is a decent selection . They're MUCH cheaper than Jamieson's.  Much.  But, the yarn is thicker and the end result is therefore very different.  

It's tricky, this thing of getting yarn.  I am lucky enough to live in a part of the world with many knitters and I therefore enjoy having 3 yarn stores within walking distance.  The walking distance is important because I have neither a car nor a license to drive one.  The yarn stores inevitably have some stock overlap (I think they all stock Cascade 200, for example) but they have quite different flavours and different specialities.  

The oldest of the three yarn stores is to the north of me and is like the stores of my youth.  There are too-narrow aisles lined with box-style shelves filled with many different kinds of yarn.  Many of the yarns in the old store are of the kind that grandmothers like.  There is more acrylic by weight in this store than in the other two combined.  However, they also stock things that I like.  Things that are widely commercially produced and not exactly the darlings of the trendy set.  There are fewer artisanal yarns at the old store, but they do stock some.  

The newest of the three yarn stores is downtown and, basically, I don't like it.  There is a big empty well in the centre of the store and my colour sense is completely in opposition to the colour sense of the people running the store and the whole thing feels oddly sterile.  I believe they have successful knit nights and lessons so I am apparently alone in finding the place to be unwelcoming, but there you go.  They do have a reliable supply of addi turbos and T-pins so I sometimes go there for basic supplies.  But I have been there meaning to pick up needles and come away with nothing. Not even the needles I meant to get.  It's just ... offputting.  They have a habit which irritates the hell out of me and is probably really nice for newer-to-knitting customers:  They suggest substitutions for EVERYTHING.  If I walk into a shop and ask if they've got, say, Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns, it's because I want that book, not a Harmony Guide**.  If I go looking for Cascade 220, don't bloody suggest manos del uruguay because it ain't the same.  Specifics, people.  Sometimes they ARE important.    

The third yarn store is a bit of a journey to get to (I say it's walking distance, but that's not strictly speaking accurate right; you can't walk there) and I don't get to it as often as I'd like.  It's my favourite of the three.  It has beautiful yarns, lovely, welcoming decor, nice notions, a really splendid straight-needle collection and taste like mine.  Just writing that sentence made me realise that I need to get myself over there soon.  But, they're not catering to the fair isle set.  It's where I got my unutterably exquisite camel-and-silk skein, though.  

There is a fabulous yarn store which does cater to the fair isle set.  They have a lovely display of 50g baubles from Nebraska in gently varied hues.  However, it's driving distance.  It's in a beautiful farm building and it's designed in exactly the right way to trigger me to part with my money.  I'd like to get there more often, but it's good that I don't.  They have splendid wools of many different descriptions and a constantly changing stock.  They also sell spinning wheels, looms, and dying equipment.  It's a temptation, always.  Anyway, I don't see myself managing to go to that place, get a nibble of yarn for swatching, swatch, make smart choices and then go back to get the right amount of the right yarn.  It isn't in the cards.  

So, instead, I am dreaming of a trip to the older of the three local stores during which I'll pick up a large quantity of Briggs and Little at prices which would make a grown sheep weep.  I can swatch and experiment to my heart's content.   Later, if it's amazing and I feel strongly that I need to knit a more delicate garment to get it right, I will go back to the drawing board and design myself something in a pricier yarn.   In the mean time, I have some B&L skeins around, I should play a bit with them to see how silly the whole notion is.  If it's going to produce a blanket that no one in their right mind would wear, I will change it up.  Alternately, if it's going to require that I have only 2 stripes in an enormous pattern, I'll have to re-think the whole thing.  

We shall see.  Still dreaming, not doing, I'm afraid.

** I just bought my first Harmony Guide (lace) and I hate it.  I won't be buying another.  After the delightfully chatty way of Barbara Walker and learning to expect stitch libraries to be organized intelligently, I can't stand the unembellished alphabetical (honestly, who knows what stitch patterns are called?) arrangement.  I don't like the wools they chose for the pattern illustrations, either.  

History

My original fair isle sweater was made with 12 skeins and 6 colours.  I am no longer a poor student and can afford as many skeins as it takes, but I'd rather not go so far that I'm trying to use up the remains for the rest of my life.  I've inherited wool from that kind of project so I know that way madness lies.  

The design of the original sweater was simple: drop-shoulder sleeves on an unshaped body.  The majority of the body was knit in the round but it split in two at the arm holes at which point it became necessary to go back and forth.  The neck was round with basic shaping and a (very slight) difference between the front and back.  There were 6 patterns (what Alice Starmore calls peeries) which repeated as necessary and although the pattern called for them to be coloured the same each time, I adapted it so that no two repeats were identical.  The 6 patterns can be thought of as 2 broad stripes and 4 little stripes.  They were arranged to run big, little, little, big, little, little.  The sweater started on ribbed cuffs of two rows of each colour (6 in all for 12 rows).   Each pattern was worked in two solid colours over its whole height.  

I liked the design that used a broad stripe and two little ones.  That worked for me.  I like the idea of changing the patterns throughout the sweater.  I think I prefer the idea of running graduated colours instead of having two-colour stripes.  I am going to give that a good thought, though, because it will affect what number of rows a pattern can have and in the end might make for some busyness.  It also requires some colour-picking above and beyond what I have done so far.  

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

I have been thinking for some time about starting a knitting blog, but there are a lot of them out there and many of them seem to be moving away from the knitting and towards the life.  At any rate, it's not the right moment to start a knitting blog ... but here I am, anyway.

I learned through a gardening blog that blogging can be a good way to encourage consistent progress. So, I am hoping that this blog will assist me in making consistent progress on the knits.  

I want to make myself a fair isle sweater.  It's been a long time since I made my first fair isle sweater.  In fact, it's been approximately half a lifetime.  I still love, adore, wear, and destroy the original, but I have learned much since then and I'd like the chance to go back and do it right.  I'd like to make it to fit me.  I'd like to make it with lots and lots and lots of colours.  I'd like to make it so that it will last (especially in the cuffs, which were the first to go in the original).  I'd also like to make it my own.  

The first fair isle sweater I made was also pretty close to the first sweater I ever made.  It was called a newfoundland sweater and the pattern came from the Philosopher's Wool company in Ontario.  I got the wool and pattern together as a sort of kit, although I selected the colours (at great, painstaking length) myself.  I messed up the first pattern ring because I didn't know the difference between the first time and the repeat.  There is an extra blank column in the first ring.  I also didn't understand the difference between sizes of yarn and so I ran out of grey long before anything else.  The tops of the sleeves are a different colour than the top of the torso.  

In order to make my new sweater, I am fortifying myself with advice from good books like "Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting" by Alice Starmore and "Traditional Fair Isle Knitting" by Sheila McGregor.  I will design the shape using advice from good books like "Sweater Design in Plain English" by Maggie Righetti and "Knitting in the Old Way" by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts.  I will cast on and off using advice from the inimitable "The Principles of Knitting" by Ruth Hemmons Hiatt, but that one I'll have to take in doses because I only have access to it at my library.  I'm not a millionaire, unfortunately.  If I were, I might fork over the $400 for a copy of POK.  

I thought maybe I'd blog about design decisions and reasoning.  I thought I'd record failures and successes and generally keep track of the sweater.  I don't actually anticipate that it will be unfair, but I thought probably that title could be available.  Right now, there is nothing of the new sweater whatsoever.  There is merely desire in my heart and some vague thoughts in my head.