Well, it's taken a while, but this project is now officially done and dusted. One of the ladies at my knitting group is given to making assumptions about my knitting - that I buy expensive yarn, that I am a quick knitter, that I am a perfectionist... None of these is in fact true, but of course all things are relative.
This item probably cost less than ten pounds to knit. I did order three balls of J&S 2ply jumper weight in a range of turquoises, but set one aside as greenish, a second as too light and used only half of the other ball. The grey, as I said last time, cost three pounds and the other colours were oddments I already had. Curiously, I opened a button tin I bought at a jumble sale some time ago and the first buttons which came to hand were the six I used here.
The darkest of the turquoises was an oddment. The risk here was that it would not be quite enough to complete the project. I reclaimed the length used in the swatch: still not enough. Rummaging through my stock of oddments, I came across the single remaining ball of a deep turquoise, just the right shade, but a DK. So then I resorted to unravelling the plies of the yarn to recover sufficient just to complete my project. I don't think anyone would be able to tell.
I tried it out at work today: even with prompting no one was able to spot that all the lozenge patterns are different on this one. This took some doing. I used Sheila McGregor's "Traditional Fair Isle Patterns as my source, using the 17 row lozenges and then topping up with some 15 row patterns. A couple I made up myself. On one section I realised that I had transposed the pattern rows for two of the lozenges in the middle of the band. But it did not seem to matter: this must have been how new patterns were invented.
I can now see clearly which patterns make the best use of the colour changes. These would bear repeating over a whole jumper. Maybe that will be my next move.
A couple of images from Marks Hall, the arboretum just to the north of our village.
This item probably cost less than ten pounds to knit. I did order three balls of J&S 2ply jumper weight in a range of turquoises, but set one aside as greenish, a second as too light and used only half of the other ball. The grey, as I said last time, cost three pounds and the other colours were oddments I already had. Curiously, I opened a button tin I bought at a jumble sale some time ago and the first buttons which came to hand were the six I used here.
The darkest of the turquoises was an oddment. The risk here was that it would not be quite enough to complete the project. I reclaimed the length used in the swatch: still not enough. Rummaging through my stock of oddments, I came across the single remaining ball of a deep turquoise, just the right shade, but a DK. So then I resorted to unravelling the plies of the yarn to recover sufficient just to complete my project. I don't think anyone would be able to tell.
I tried it out at work today: even with prompting no one was able to spot that all the lozenge patterns are different on this one. This took some doing. I used Sheila McGregor's "Traditional Fair Isle Patterns as my source, using the 17 row lozenges and then topping up with some 15 row patterns. A couple I made up myself. On one section I realised that I had transposed the pattern rows for two of the lozenges in the middle of the band. But it did not seem to matter: this must have been how new patterns were invented.
I can now see clearly which patterns make the best use of the colour changes. These would bear repeating over a whole jumper. Maybe that will be my next move.
A couple of images from Marks Hall, the arboretum just to the north of our village.
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4 comments:
Stunning - outstanding - gorgeous!
Thank you for sharing this beautiful garment. It looks as if it would be a very entertaining knitting project.
WOW! So beautiful. What an accomplishment. Following a big project, the test is to see if you ever want to have anything to do with it again and here you are contemplating a third. Brava.
I love your vest and colors. This is a stunning piece of knit work.
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