I have finally learned to knit fair isle. I didn't even know there was a specific technique for continental knitters! All my english and american books just show various diagrams of holding this and that yarn in this and that position. I didn't know none of that works for continental knitting, but what I
could tell was how ugly my earlier swatches were. An hour or so with a Danish book worked wonders. At first I was sceptical. Holding one yarn over one finger and the other over two? But it really works, and is actually quite comfortable.
So then I just wanted to get straight to business. Well, that is the kind of business with only two colors, and not more than 7 stitches in one color. I still haven't figured out how to cross the yarns on the back without switching the skeins around, which I'm sure is not the way to do it.
I wanted a round and flowery pattern, so I was happy to find that
Pinneguri's beautiful thistle pattern doesn't have more than 7 stitches of one color.
After some swatching (yes, indeed), I decided to cast on 288 stitches, which is 9 pattern repeats. I cast on with the dominant color (which in my case is an orange-blue-brown multicolored Kauni, I used a grey one as background) and tried a tubular cast on first, my new favorite for rib! But it really does not work for a two-color rib. It was too bulky, so in the end, I used a standard cast-on, and -
IMPORTANT - one row of all knit stitches in alternating color, followed by the two-color rib proper. This way, bumps of wrong color are avoided.
Then, after a few rows of rib, 28 cm of the pattern followed
I have to admit that the blue color blends more into the gray background than I had expected. But, this is really just an experiment, so I guess that's ok. As you can see, I've started decreasing for arms and V-neck (more about that later - I'm using some numbers I came up with, so we'll have to wait and see how it works), with some stitches for steeking inserted. I've of course never made a steek, so in that respect, too, this is an experiment. In other words, don't worry about the colors when the whole thing may still fall apart later!
The beautiful flower pattern on the vest comes from Dale of Norway, and was originally published with the name Damask. Lots of people have since made their own versions, many with Kauni, so this is just one of them.
