One of the things I do when I'm starting work using a new technique is to develop little prototypes. Something I can use to ensure my stitching, colour work and shaping is all OK.
Well this time I was going to work in fair isle stitch , combining 2 and sometimes 3 colours together in colourful designs.
I had done some fair isle work before, but always chickened out when it came to knitting in the round. I wasn't sure I could control the pattern when it came to the point where the round joined and so steered well away from it. But recently I had been to a fair isle work shop with my new knitting group, here we had learned all about steeking (I'm sure I'll cover this in a later post) and the lady running the workshop had shown us some of her lovely fair isle knits that had been worked in the round. I couldn't for the life of my see where the round started and finished so I took my trust in this technique and decided to give it a go.
Last week I knit a fair isle headband. I liked the pattern I had designed on paper and loved the colours I had chosen. The stitching work was ok, but not brilliant BUT the headband , even though I measured it when I started) was too small:( .
I quickly sussed out the problem , I had worked on the wrong needle size, picking up the incorrect circular needles to use (why don't they have the size on the needles?)
This had caused both the stitches to be a little tight and the size of the headband to be too small.
Today I set to, to create yet another prototype. This time working on the right size needles (just 0.25mm bigger) I set off working in the same pattern. I finished the headband off, tried it on and then realised I had created it too wide !
Golly gosh , why don't I put my brain in gear sometime!
Ha ha , so my headband is now a hat ! I used my experience of knitting hats for the Wool and Gang and shaped the top of the headband / hat as I went along.
I think it's rather cute, don't you?
looking good
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