Recently in Drops Fair Isle Category

So I've swatched, washed, pulled and prodded my Silke Tweed swatches. And guess what? I like the yarn, but I do not like how it feels knitted up to gauge. It's almost gauze-like. This yarn seems way too thin for 23 stitches per 4 inches. I've mulled it over for a few days now and I've decided to return the yarn. I want to love this sweater, damn it, even if it doesn't want to love me.

What's my next idea? I'm on the lookout for a tweedy wool that will get 5.5-6 spi and has a good variety of colors. The difficult color seems to be the rusty orangey color that's in the entire middle section of the sweater. Cascade Lana D'oro is on closeout at Webs and seemed like a great choice, but no rust color. Any suggestions?

Other Knitting Projects

I've been picking up Lockwood for a bit of knitting almost every night. I'm on the 3rd and 4th skeins now. I'll spare you a pic.

I also started another small project as a pick me up after I accepted the Silke Tweed demise. I'll post about it in a few days after I know it's gonna work (and with my luck, who knows!)

Men's Aran

I'm looking for a good pattern for a nice aran for a guy. I'd prefer something that's more cabley than it is textured stitches. I saw a Patons booklet online that looks promising but I can't find any pics of the patterns inside the book. It's called Weekend Retreat. Anyone know where I can buy this booklet in person? Or know of a site that posts the pics? I've done the requisite google search with no luck.

After I posted yesterday I went over to Elann to pick out the red shades to undo my new and "improved" color scheme I cooked up last week. And guess what? They were out of the reds I wanted! Last week they had 50+ of one of them! Argh....

I finally sucked it up and bought the real thing - Garnstudio Silke Tweed - from everyone's favorite yarn dealers -- Threadbear. I considered a few other possibilities but none were quite right.

I came close to some Rowan Felted Tweed as I love the yarn. But the colors online varied so much that I wasn't sure what I was really picking out. The only LYS that I know of that carries it is one I've sworn off because their business practices are horrible. Can you believe this place charges you a fee to be at their knit ins!!! And no, you don't get any special kind of gift or anything. It's simply to sit in the back of their store one night a week and knit. So yeah, I refuse to buy from them anymore.

Threadbear ships fast so I'm hoping I get it tomorrow at the latest. I'm really excited to see this yarn in person!

Until then, Lockwood is getting some deserved attention. Can't really complain about knitting with Noro :) Silk Garden is soooo soft!

Phew that was fast! My Elann order was delivered to me yesterday! I nervously opened the box, hoping I was going to like the colors all together in real life. I did! The colors on the site were very true.

The suspense of what the yarn would look like all knitted up together got the best of me and I had to swatch the FI portion last night. I did the main body repeat -- the one that goes across the chest. It's a 59 row repeat and it took me about 4 hours to do! I didn't get bored at all. I found myself looking forward to each new row, the way you'd read a book when it gets to one of the parts where something is being slowly revealed about a character or the plot. Finally around midnight the swatch was completed and steamed flat.

Here's what I learned:

• I can do real fair isle!
• Colors look so different depending on which colors they're paired with. Take the lighter blue for example. In the bottom portion it's paired with white and looks rather light. In the top portion when it's paired with mostly rust the color takes on a deeper tone.
• Margene is right! A little "poison" color does alot. I love the way the kelly green pops in the section with the navy blue.
• I like the weight and hand of the yarn. When I first felt it I thought it might be too artificial feeling. I suppose it's the treatment the wool gets so it can be a superwash. But once knitted up it really feels like wool
• My gauge is slightly looser on the rows that do not have any FI on them. FI experts -- does this mean I'm stranding a bit too tightly? Or is this common? I'm at 6spi on the plain rows and 6.5spi on the FI rows. Here's a pic of the back of my swatch:
• Most importantly though, I'm not crazy about the colorway as a whole. They're pretty together, and I do think they work. But once I knitted up the pattern I realized that the red was a big part of the appeal of the model sweater. I also think the design looks rather Native American, and the reds seem to go better with that.

So what am I going to do? Place a second order with Elann today to make the sweater in the original colors. I'm not at all sorry I gave this a try. I had to knit up a swatch anyway, and all this did was confirm that I like the design and I do really enjoy FI.

OK...off to order me some red yarn!

Oh wait, one more thing. I joined Eklectika's Gerbera along.

C'mon and join us! It starts Labor Day -- September 6th -- so you have plenty of time to prepare!