Last year, early in 2010, I came across Sweater Quest - the story of a woman taking on an iconic knitting project, an Alice Starmore Tudor Rose cardigan. The book recieved some great and some horrid reviews. I quite enjoyed reading it and thought the author did a nice job of weaving in the personal, the knitting, the sociological, the obsessions of creativity, and the fascinating intersection between art, creativity, creative integrity and cultural ownership. I'm not sure I always enjoyed her authorial voice - there was something a bit slangy about her writing - but it was certainly quick to read and as I read it, I wanted to know more about Alice Starmore and then when I did, I was hooked. I needed to knit an Alice Starmore.
So, it was ordered and then it arrived.
Then, I needed to buy a ball winder so that I could wind on all these gorgeous hanks. This is what Alice Starmore is famous for - colours that alone amaze, colours that when combined are transcendent and sublime. She has also been prolific and has done much to maintain the genre of knitting that is "fair isle". Her book on Fair Isle Knitting has an interesting chapter on the origins and history of this style of knitting and I feel both distant and connected to those women of the Scottish islands.
I really should have been ready to start. I had the project inspiration, I had the pattern, the wool, the ball winder had arrived and my daughter (for a small fee) wound all the hanks into balls. But somehow, I struggled with starting. I've done a bit of intarsia knitting - the mohair cardigan from my youth that I referred to here, the Thomas the Tank Engine cardigan for my son when he was 3, another jumper from my youth - but fair isle, was I up to it? This Alice Starmore Oregon vest was an expensive purchase for me. What if I stuffed it up or hated it or worse, finished it but it didn't look good? Oh the agonies of self-doubt.
I found the solution in another project. Just as I knitted a cable mohair shawl as a practice run for a larger more complicated cable project, I decided to do a simple fair isle project to teach myself the two-handed knitting technique. Adrienne Martini in Sweater Quest does the same thing so it seems a sensible, if long winded, way to proceed.
I searched the internet for an easy fair isle project and came up with this free knitting pattern, Lion Brand Cloudsong Cowl. I took the easy option and ordered the supplies from this site and can show you my progress.
I also have used a pattern reading tip from - I cannot remember where - somewhere in my reading around the internet - removable highlighter tape. I've enlarged the pattern and then I use the highlighter tape to indicate where I'm up to and its just like post-it notes, it goes on and comes off many times before it looses its stickiness. So as I finish a row I move the sticky tape up a level. It seems to be going along reasonably well and although, as to be expected, I'm way more coordinated with my right hand, I am managing the left hand OK and my tension seems OK. Time will tell though. The cowl is not a big project and it is getting into chilly mornings, chilly evenings, maybe a nice, cozy neck warmy thing would be nice about soon...better get a move on.
