Oh deer...

I have finally come to Fair Isle knitting.  I've always been enchanted by it, and here I am now- working on the bust of a stag and trees in fingerless glove format.

The design I've used is based on one that I found on  braceletbook.com.  I took the pattern and altered it a bit to fit more of what I was looking for, and then designed a very basic tree shape.

I transferred and designed the tree for my patterns on stitchfiddle.com, which ended up being endlessly useful, as it has a function that allowed me to select which row I was focusing on and highlighted it while dimming everything else but still leaving it visible.  This is probably old hat to most everyone else, but I was plum thrilled to not have to keep making various marks to know where I was at.

Curled under my Halloween quilt, I chipped away at the first fingerless glove. Despite a couple of hang ups in figuring out my own rhythm with multiple strands, it started to come along quite nicely.  

I did quickly realise as I was knitting along, however, that knitting as tightly as I normally like to was both my greatest ally and greatest foe.  Keeping the stitches tight made sure nothing was disproportionate to the rest, yet pulling either of the strands too tight would make it so that I would end up with unfortunate puckering and a lack of stretch around.  I found though that carrying the non-active strand consistently behind the active strand helped keep me from feeling like the non-active was too loose.  I did this by twisting the two strands so that the non-active would be caught with the active, but as I created the stitch, only the active would show.  

The dark grey is the active strand while the white is the non-active.

Pulling Only the active strand through.

Only the dark shows.

Yet the white is close and makes it so that I don't shred these within a couple of months because I keep getting my fingers stuck in big loops.  

The end result of this strange adventure of Fair Isle was elating - it was remarkably satisfying to be able to turn the blocked-out pattern that I had adjusted to fit my wishes into this beautiful, and incredibly soft, creation.

I've found that what I love most about quilting, knitting, spinning, et cetera is that I can create all of the beautiful things I think of.  It's an expression of the soul and grants me the ability to give myself something I want.  I can take something I think is beautiful, and make it into something unique that holds that same beauty while being something that’s entirely my own.

Thank you for reading, and stay tuned for more projects!