Tuesday, January 3, 2006

I saw a brief segment on color knitting on the Knitty Gritty tv show. They talked about slip stitch color knitting, intarsia, and Fair Isle knitting (used to mean all stranded color knitting I guess). I only use the term Fair Isle knitting for traditional, only 2 colors per row, no long floats, geometric designs using Shetland wool. There are differences between Fair Isle knitting and the traditional stranded color knitting of Scandinavia, Latvia, Estonia, Turkey, the Andes, etc. I haven't done many Fair Isle projects but here is a tam I designed a while ago. I was going for a water theme with the wavy pattern and the colors.



The 2-color knitting shown on tv was done by picking up and dropping each yarn as it was needed; they didn't show any of the various methods for holding both yarns. Then the host of the show said (I videotaped it and watched it again to get the quote right) "I think another thing that we don't really talk about is that a lot of, I know a lot of people also don't do color knitting because they think it tends to be ugly." They went on to reassure viewers that you could use whatever colors you like for color knitting and use color knitting as a form of artistic self-expression. I honestly had no clue that some knitters thought two-color knitting was ugly.

The ruffled mitten has turned into a sock. I'm not sure if I'm going to use this second chart pattern either. sigh My knitting is so much faster and more productive when I use other people's patterns rather than always having to invent something on my own. I am waiting anxiously for my copy of Handknit Holidays so I can make the cabled socks. If the book doesn't come tomorrow maybe I'll go through my huge pile of Dale of Norway patterns and pick something.