"I'm Fair Isle-ing!"

Last night I retouched my original fair isle idea while watching the Science of Sleep (for the 3rd time - I actually own it, its that good). Once I got the pattern down (see below), I started trying to get the top of the hat going: it was work (I'm not gonna say how many tries it took - I kept losing sticks!). I stayed up until I was sure I had it down, but then frogged what I had and went to bed. All the practice paid off today, though; the cast on and increases were a cinch, and I have a respectable hat going. I'm not doing it on the #8 circulars though - I tried it out, but didn't like it - I think I knit too tight for 'em, because the loops don't slide very well; I'm back on the double-points and liking it a lot better. Also, because I knit tight, I increased to 88 (instead of 80) 'just in case'.

I've tried to learn something new with every project: the scarf was a good foundation for the basics; the hats were good for learning to use double points, decreasing, double-stitching, and purling; with the gloves I learned how to cable, create additional increases/decreases, and how to stick to a pattern (with the result being matching gloves!). For this project, I learned to fair isle (dur) - but we'll have to wait and see how good I am at it...

And hey! I got the pics of the above projects posted - just see my first blog entry below. Oh yeah, if you all have any ideas about sweaters I might knit, lemme know.