So I am doing my practice run in preparation for the grand adventure. A practice at two handed fair isle knitting....is it hard...is it easy? Knitting in the round is certainly easy and nice, just knitting, knitting, round and round we go. But two hands? I certainly don't feel very coordinated with that left hand and getting the tension right...hmm..
At first, I had Elizabeth Zimmerman's voice in my head where she said knitting loosely was all the go. Personally, that's not my style. I'm actually more of a tight knitter and whenever I knit a swatch I'm always needing to up a size or two in the needle department. Anyway, I hated knitting loosely it felt too weird and the results were disappointing, lots of gaps, and stretchy looking bits...bleh. So I tightened up and then all of sudden I had Alice Starmore's voice in my head...don't knit too tightly or it will buckle the pattern. Sure enough the stranding at the back was too tight and the pattern wouldn't sit nicely. Oh sigh. It was a trial garment anyway. So third time around and by now I'm up to colour change three (green Cactus) and I've got my tension to an acceptable level and sometimes I'm not thinking about knitting while I'm knitting. Ah, I'm entering the zone of knitting where thoughts and dreams float around while your hands do the work. I'm still too new at the whole fair isle lark to be in the zone for very long, but still the zone is the zone.
I am nearly finished. According to the pattern, I've just got to do a few more "V" like shapes in the brown and then I knit a few plain centimetres of the green cactus and then it is cast off, hemmed and I guess you go straight into wearing do you? How do you block a tube? I may have to cast my question into the interwebs. As I've been knitting this, my family and I have been fascinated by how long it is. They think I'm knitting it for my Giraffe. Very funny. It is rather long though. The cotton/acrylic blend yarn is very cozy and soft but I think it will be voluminous.
