Stranded.

This is the weekend of Maryland Sheep and Wool. I really wish I was there - instead, I feel a little stranded ;) tho I will be having a little yarn fun myself this weekend - the plan is to have a little field trip up to Jerome to visit Knit1 Bead 2 and then spend the rest of the weekend up to my elbows in yarn... Those of you going, please don't forget to stop by the Cloverhill Yarn booth and pat my yarn!

In the meantime, it looks like I will finally get some steek action going at some point in the not too distant future!

I've cast on for Venezia - a fine gauge fair isle sweater. I plan on knitting it with the 3/4 length sleeves plus a v-neck modification. Of course, I didn't select the best yarn to steek with - I'm knitting this sweater from my very own Spritely Goods Fey - since the yarn itself has subtle variegations, I've decided to go with a simple bi-color version.

Since the yarn is indeed superwash, I will be using reinforced steeks. Be sure to wish me luck when the time comes ;)

I'm loving the colorwork - though I was not so happy trying to get gauge - turns out I'm a loose knitter when knitting single stranded with this yarn, so the solid portion is on US0s...and I'm a tight knitter when it comes to colorwork - so the fair isle is being knit on US4s! Once I got gauge*, things were progressing smoothly - see?

In case you are wondering how I opted to do my gauge swatch, I actually cast on for a pair of sleeves - I quickly discovered my loose knitting on the hems, but it took several changes of needles and a 2 frogging sessions to eventually get it right completely. While I would have preferred to have cast on for the body, allowing myself a bit more latitude with figuring out how much yarn I had available for the sleeves, I am knitting the sleeves first because I actually used them for my gauge swatches. Because the swatch had to be knit in the round and I didn't want to waste the limited yarn that I have for this project (8 oz / ~980 yards each color), I cast on for the sleeves to save myself some ripping. As for why I'm knitting both sleeves at the same time, it's an attempt to keep the gauge as even as possible on both sleeves - that way I don't wind up with one somehow longer than the other...it also prevents me from having second sleeve syndrome :)