Prepwork

May 31st, 2011

Gearing up for Nerd Wars with some swatching. I did a few 1×1 fair-isle swatches. Normally, stockinette stitches are wider than they are tall, but fair-isle plays some tricks and they’re generally pretty square in the end. It’s nice, because I don’t have to rechart my graphs after all. I did a swatch with the star/medallions that I designed myself, and I’m iffy on them. At first, I didn’t like them at all, but after blocking they’re not so bad. I like the stark contrast of the empty space between them, compared to the overall fairisle, where the lighter blue begins to take over.

The two 1×1 fairisle swatches were done first – the left one, knitted at 10.75 stitches to the inch is very dense, and the stitches get a little non-descript. That was done on size 0 needles. The larger scale is 7.5 stitches to the inch, on size 2 needles. I like the idea of insanely tight gauge, but it’s unnecessary for this design. The larger swatch was knitted in the round and cut like a steek. It has yet to begin to unravel, and I never reinforced it; I will be knitting the jacket in the round as well.