Fair Isle Fascination

I really enjoy stranded two-colour knitting. On our UK tour, I became aware of the designs of Kate Davies, a Scottish designer of knitwear.

I knit one of Kate's free patterns, her Stranded Colourwork Headband using 5 colours of Knit Picks Palette yarn I had from a Fair Isle sweater kit I abandoned last year. It's my first finished project of 2012.

I lined it with some 3 ply Sport Handwash yarn from Hubbert Farms . It's a blend of 75% Alpaca, 10% Finn, 10% Mohair and 5% Seasilk. It's deliciously soft and warm.

We have been fortunate to not have had a lot of wintry weather yet but all that is changing soon.

I think I'll look smashing trudging out in the snow with my new headband.

I have cast on Kate's Sheep Heid hat. The pattern was inspired by the Sheep Heid Inn near Duddingston Loch in Scotland.

I purchased the pattern on Ravelry a while back and then learned through Anne Featonby's blog that Debbie Wilson at Sheeps Ahoy was selling the yarn packs for the hat. The kit arrived this week. I expected to receive 9 50g skeins of yarn. Instead, the yarn was carefully measured out and labelled, ready for me to start right in on the project.

In my future, I hope to knit Alice Starmore's Oregon Cardigan.

I'm not a big fan of boxy drop-shouldered sweaters so I hope to modify the pattern for set-in sleeves. I found the Vogue Knitting 2007 Holiday issue on eBay which contains the pattern and it is winging its way to me as I write this. The next project will be to obtain the yarn for the project.

Skip and I are getting ready to go on a holiday and I've been planning what knitting projects to take with me. I won't be taking my spinning wheel or sewing machine. I may take a drop spindle and will definitely take some stitching projects and, of course, a bunch of stuff to knit.