Fun with Fair Isle

I’m continuing on with my current run of knitting posts, I’m pretty obsessed at the moment! I love Fair Isle knitting, all those gorgeous 1940’s colourwork sweaters make me very envious. I thought I’d make my life a bit easier (for once) and start with a small project before embarking on a whole jumper! I’ve had the Acorn Teeth Mitts pattern by Diana Walla in my Ravelry favourites page for ages, and decided I should get started on them before I ran out of winter…

   

(I kind of want to apologise for the quality of the photos in this post, its really hard to take photos of your own hands!)

I used the most luscious wool for these, as I only had to buy one ball of each colour. Its Outlaw Yarns Bohemia Sport weight, which is a blend of wool, alpaca and possum. Its so soft and so warm, I love it! I used the Carnivale (red), Fog (light grey) and London Town (dark grey) colourways. 

 

I thought that stranded colourwork would be really tricky, but to be honest I had more trouble getting used to knitting with the 2.75mm DPN’s than I had with the colourwork! It was like knitting with toothpicks, especially coming straight from the big 6mm needles I used for my Lesley jumper. I was so scared of breaking one, I guess thats why you get 6 in a set! 

  

The actual pattern knitted up pretty quickly. I had a few issues with getting my float tension right, especially when I was changing between needles, but I made everything looser than I thought it should be and it’s worked ok! Theres still a few patches which are a bit lumpy, but I can live with that. They’d probably even out with blocking, but I’ve been wearing them so much that I havn’t had a chance to block them yet! Bad practice, I know. Maybe I’ll get around to it over the summer…

 

I think they look pretty good from the inside too!
   

I am a bit sad that I have such a big jump in the pattern at the beginning/end of each round, I’ll definitely need to look up some of those links you all left me about knitting jogless rounds! The other stupid think I did was knit the thumbs in stocking stitch instead of in ribbing, so they’re rolling at the top. But its not annoying me enough to want to rip it out and knit them again!

 

I’m pleased with how the Vikkel braid around the top of each mitten turned out too. Learning how to do them gave me a bit of a headache, I spent ages on youtube trying to figure it out. Eventually I just went back to  the written instructions, and they made more sense once I started trying to knit them!

  

I’m really happy with how they turned out! They’re a nice length, long enough to cover the cuffs of my sleeves, but not so long that they interfere with the fit of whatever I’m wearing as an outer layer. And they go really nicely with my red duffle coat! Its like I planned it that way…

   

Looking particularly twee here…

I feel like everytime I try something new in a knitting pattern it ends up being much simpler than I’ve talked myself into believing it will be! I’d like to try a jumper pattern with a Fair Isle yoke, though that’ll probably have to be next winter now. Maybe the Sundottir? I’d like to knit this Striped Spring Shirt from Purl Bee too, thats technically colourwork… What are your favourite knitting patterns? Help me build up my knitting queue!