fair isle from scratch

It's a long story. It begins with boxes and boxes and bags and bags of yarn I inherited, most all of it acrylic, most none of it more than three skeins of any one color or dye lot. And I'm getting pretty sick of variegated, so when I found five 100gm skeins of scarlet, I imagined there was enough for a sweater. Two skeins gone I knew there was no way enough of this one color/dye lot, and I'd have to make another plan...

So how about fair isle? I've never done it and don't know even the basics, but why should that stop me? Can you hear it? rippit, rippit...

Another thing that should have stopped me (if I had any sense) is the fact I didn't have a design pattern that would fit my cloth dimensions, but nooooo I spent a day redrawing the design instead.

After a bit of rippitting I figured out the correct way (for me) to hold the strands, and row by row am training my fingers to cooperate. Still don't know if I'll have enough yarn to finish the project, but oh well.

Here's the first 14 rows, complete:



stay tuned for updates...