In an oddly organised turn of events, I am already planning a Christmas make. Admittedly it is quite a complicated one so I thought I should sink my teeth into it. That and Shelia inspired me to start on the Christmas makes already.
I am planning a fair isle knit vest for my Uncle so hit Ravelry for some inspiration:
Some very complicated and eye-watering patterns were out there but as I was scrolling through I realised I had the perfect pattern in my library already. I bought Kate Davies book Inspired by Islay when it first came out and haven’t knit anything from it yet. Although it is a lovely book even without the knitting patterns.
I can’t wait to cast this on, although I expect I will loose steam at some point half way through as it will be a lot of stitching!
I recently I started editing photos on my computer again and downloaded Gimp to use instead of photoshop and have been enjoying remembering all the amazing things that you can do. So I decided to see if I could use its functionality to try out some different colour schemes for the colourwork motif. Turns out it is so easy to do that I got a little carried away with it…
Although the blue aesthetic appeals to me most I know that that is not the same for the recipient who is much more of a green-brown person. I decided to go with Jamieson’s of Shetland wool which comes in a mind-boggling array of colours, over 220! I will admit I spent a good part of last night playing with colours and trying to pick the colour of the wool out of the photos to use in my colour schemes. I know that the colours displayed on the monitor might not be quite right but I am hoping that they are close enough as I ordered all the wool last night without checking the colours against one another. I did buy one extra ball to work out which one of them goes best when I actually have the wools in front of me.
In total, I ordered 16 25g balls of wool and should have quite a bit of the colours left over. I don’t know how much of the main colours I will have left as the specific lengths are not listed in the pattern just no of balls (and I am changing the wool!).
One note if you do go for this wool, the Jamieson’s website gives you the ability to order two different thicknesses of wool on the same colour listing. Be careful if your going for DK that you change that pesky little drop-down menu for EVERY colour that you order. *Guess who didn’t do this! Thankfully the lovely Lynn at Jamieson’s picked up on my little mistake and emailed me to double check before sending out the order. Thank you very much Lynn 😀
I am looking forward to sinking my teeth into this project but know that I will have to space out the amount of knitting that I do on it as recently my wrists have started to hurt again… 🙁 Hopefully it isn’t due to the weather and I am going to have sore wrists every winter from now on! But I am just trying to be a bit more cautious this year and be nicer to them.
I autumn prompting you to think about some more makes? Are you cracking out the knitting/crochet now the weather is turning cooler?
Wow that looks amazing. I’ve always shied away from knitting fair isle as I’m put off by the thought of wrangling all those different colours and keeping it all neat and tidy on the reverse side.
This looks like a real labour of love – he must be a very special uncle.
When I had overdone the knitting and crochet a year or so ago, somebody recommended these gloves to me and I really found they helped. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Handeze-Therapeutic-Craft-Glove-Size-3/dp/B000WYZSVK
Thanks for this recomendation, I might have to look into them. I’m just amused as to why the listing isn’t suitable for under 18s!
Gimp is great, I used to use it many years ago but have only just got back to it as this computer didn’t even have a basic photo editor (just paint). I might just get round to actually exploring more of its uses this time around.
I would love to say he is a really special Uncle but honestly its mostly that I find him VERY hard to get presents for so since I have been given a heads up of something that I can actually make that is going to be useful and apreciated I am running with it to make up for the previous generic presents.
That will be gorgeous. One hint after my own experience – either knit a size larger than needed or be VERY careful to keep the yarn floats very loose across the back of your knitting. It’s worth checking your gauge again once you have a decent sized piece of patterned work . Better to have to re-knit a lump than have an expensive mistake. Good luck – and enjoy it. Knitting fair isle is actually fun!
Yeah I like fairisle work, its just been a while since I ahev sat down and spent any time on something a little complicated. Fairisle requires too much yarn to be a portable enough project for the summer.
Yeah I know that fairisle is much less stretchy than normally knitting, which is one of the reasons I have always been suspicous of it on socks. I will be very careful and measure and re-measure. Probably even block part way through and then re-measure.
Thanks for the advice. 🙂
I’ve always shied away from fair isle – mainly because of wrangling all those colours and keeping it neat across the back. What I now know, thanks to Kim above, are called floats.
He must be a very special uncle as this will definitely be a labour of love.
Gimp is fun (and free) isn’t it, but I don’t really make the most of it – I should sit down and spend some more time with it one of these days.
Computers are wonderful for being able to mess around with colours before starting a project. Sorry to hear about your wrists. Always as well to treat them gently. Once I worked out how to do it I found Fair Isle quite soothing. Look forward to seeing how it works out.
Trying to treat them well, or at least not make them any worse.
Hopefully this will be a pattern that I can get into quite easily otherwise it could be a bit of a mission. I’ll just need a good way of keeping track of all the different rows and colour changes… 🙂