Tangled in fair isle

I’ve been searching for knitting classes without a lot of success. There is a lot I still don’t know how to do, but it is getting harder to find classes to sign up for – so many for beginners, but the intermediate classes tend to be for types of knitting I’m already comfortable with. I know how to read lace charts and how to knit a sock, I’m already a Continental knitter, and I’ve made cable sweaters. For spinning, the classes seem to stop after the basics and basics plus classes, though I do plan to take one of the dying classes in the near future.

What I do want to learn is how to do more styles of casting on and binding off, how to design my own lace shawl, how to knit without being so strictly tied to a pattern. There are classes like that at some of the big events, but not so many at the local LYSs I look into. Spinning-wise, I want to learn how to do long draw properly and how to plan my yarn more intentionally rather than just seeing how it turns out between my dying attempts and my spinning endeavors.

I did find one that I attended the last two Saturdays. “Celebrating Steeks” gave me a chance to retry some fair isle. We knit a small tube, intended to be felted and turned into an even smaller bag, with the intention of learning how to knit a steek and then how to prepare it for cutting.

Watching me attempt to knit with yarns held in both right and left hands (I’m a left hand-picker normally) while knitting in the round with dp needles was entertaining for those who witnessed it. I think that any one of the skills – yarn in right hand, two colors, and correctly tensioning the fair isle, while following a chart, adding a steek, and knitting in the round with those larger than usual for me needles – would have gone smoothly, but putting them all together led to some tangles and turmoil. I can’t say I enjoyed knitting the tube, but it did get better looking as I progressed through the rows, and I can see where knitting fair isle on a circular needle would be much simpler as a learning project.

The steek prep-and-cutting was fun though – we learned how to secure the edges with back stitch or a crochet stitch (crochet is also new for me) with the possibility of machine zigzags or no special sewing at all for projects with appropriate yarn. I’d never knit with true Shetland yarn before and it really is “sticky.”

Now, of course, swept up by the finishing of one 10” x 10” square of fair isle, I want to immediately start a sweater. But a pillow or something that size might be a bit more sensible. Though I do have the yarn for a Kauni damask cardigan already, and then there is this sweater, which I look at every day online . . .