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.