fair-isle fun

Things I have learnt about fair-isle knitting (or stranded colour work, if you will) from my first item that I have knitted in this way..

• Tension is everything: and it's tough. It's something I've always struggled with - my mother says I knit tightly, but it lapses into something sloppy far too often.
• Making a little card with a sample of each colour (particularly when they're so similar) is such a godsend! There are so many similar colours in this project, it was driving me crazy.
• So many ends to sew in. So. Many. Ends.
• My respect for fair-isle knitters like Alice Starmore has expanded incredibly, and also increased my interest in visiting the Shetland isles ten-fold. 
• It looks harder than it is! Two colours on each row is actually pretty easy to handle, once you get into the swing of it.
• I also learnt the hard way the importance of keeping the same colour on the top or the bottom, there are hundreds of posts out there about this!
• I think good needles are important. I was using Knit Pro's Nova interchangeable ones, because the tips are so smooth because they're metal, and they have a good point on them without being too sharp. 
• Did I mention I have a lot of ends to sew in? Sigh.

I finished the hat about two weeks ago and I still haven't sewn in the ends. When I get it all finished and blocked I'll show you a better photos!

glowing blue

This is such a prized possession of mine, I just had to show you this old knit. I bought this particular yarn from a knitting fair my mum took me to early this year, and I was in love. The hall was full of beautiful yarn, the kind that is super hard to find around here. There wasn't a ball of pastel yellow or fluroescent green acrylic in sight, but hanging skeins of, what I called, 'glowing' wool. They are silk yarns that are dyed beautiful colours. After uhming and aahing for most of the day, I limited myself to just the one skein, and that was this beautiful sapphire blue from Fibres Exotica. It was quite expensive, so I just got the one skein.. which left me with a dilemma - what could I make from one ball?! 

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I wanted to knit a crochet lacy hat, and eventually made this beauty - which I'm absolutely in love with. It's not the warmest of hats, obviously, more designed for fashion than warmth!
The pattern was the Summer 'Combination' Hat on Ravelry, and it was my first proper foray into crochet - one that wasn't the easiest of tasks when we had to convert US crochet terms to English and vice versa.. my mum helped me a lot, haha.