Saturday, March 05, 2005

Mail Call and Beginning Dale

I worked on some scrubbies and some other projects this week and now my hands are sore, so I'm taking a little break from hand knitting.

I ordered the yarn pack for the Fair Isle Sampler Hat in Interweave Knits Winter 2004 a couple weeks ago. They said it wouldn't arrive for 4-6 weeks. Boy was I surprised to find it in my mailbox yesterday!



Here are all the little balls of yarn laying on the open magazine where you can see the photo of the hat. Before I actually start knitting the hat I will measure how many yards of each color are included in the pack so that I can use up scraps of yarn to make another version of this hat in the future.

My order from Elann has also arrived. I ordered several shades of Sonata cotton from purple to green to play around with. Aren't they luscious?



I don't have a specific project in mind, but on the website they show a sample of the yarn knitted into a mitered square that is very pretty. No doubt this yarn is destined to become something domino-like.

The prospect of knitting on little bitty needles for many many months just didn't seem as entertaining to me this week as it did in January. I think the achy knuckles had something to do with that. So, I decided to try knitting the Dale Rocking Horse sweater on the machine.

After much swatching and calculating I have begun. I am working on a Studio 360 punchcard knitter with ribber attachment. I am not using punchcards, however, I'm manually selecting my needles for the fairisle pattern. I also opted for a simple 1 x 1 rib that is much easier to work on the machine than the 2 x 2 garter rib used in the pattern.



Here is the front of the sweater on the machine, left (top), and on the blocking board, right (bottom). I'm pleased with the way it is turning out in the red-white-gray colorway and can't wait to see it when it's finished.

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