The Big Picture

I can't tell you how many times I've started a project and abandoned it after an inch or two of knitting because I didn't like how it was looking.  How many of those projects might have turned out okay if I had continued knitting?

Visionary Designers

That's why it always amazes me when I start knitting someone else's design and after knitting a few inches, I think, "I'm glad I know what this is going to look like, because if I had started designing this garment, I would be ripping it all out right now."

My newest project is like that...I saw a Rowan design called "Tilt" by Lisa Richardson, and it's a Fair Isle/stranded knitting design using two different tweedy yarns (Summerspun and Revive) and the colors sometimes overlap in ways that make them look quite similar.  So even though I'm knitting a design in a different colorway, the differentiation in color doesn't look like I've changed color at all.

But, just like the subtle differences that are noticeable when there is a dye-lot change in yarn, the differences in colors are just enough to discern a pattern in the Fair Isle design.

Current Knitting

It took me a while to locate one of the Rowan yarns, but I ended up getting both yarns from two different companies in the UK.  Even with shipping, I got a decent deal.

Here are the two yarns:

Here's what the sweater is supposed to look like:

And here's what I've done so far:

I'm still not convinced, but even if the design isn't as obvious as I'd hoped, I still like the fabric that it's creating.  I'll press on.

Readers' Comments/Questions

Regarding the Spiked Crochet Afghan, weaverwaif writes, "do you have to stop/start every few inches with a new color ?"

Yes...actually each color stripe is two rows of single crochet, with a "spiked" crochet stitch ever 7th stitch on the first row of each new color.  Really quite easy, but each stripe will have two ends to weave in after the fact.