Earlier in the month I told you about some of the issues which arose while dyeing yarn for a beautiful pattern I'd seen called Sari, designed by Kieran Foley.  Well the knitting has begun!   In this pattern you're combining fair isle techniques along with lace knitting techniques, and I struck a problem very quickly.  The floats of the colour that I wasn't using were starting to show through the holes left by the lace, as you can see in this photograph - at the bottom you can see the orange yarn showing through:

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I meddled with the colours in that photo to make the problem more visible.  I got around the issue by trapping my floats with a different stitch, and you can see that a few rows further on this was sorted out, and the floats were no longer visible.

I am not a fast knitter, and while this pattern is not difficult it is complex, and requires all my concentration and a lot of counting!  But it is growing, albeit slowly.  So far I'm happy with the colours, and while I cannot see a great difference between the first two graduated shades of purple (if anything I think the second shade is slightly darker than the first!), there is a definite distinction between the first two and the third:

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My fair isle diamonds are a delight to watch grow:

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but if I'm honest I think the back of the work is just as pleasing!

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For the tiny diamonds I am using random bits of yarn which I have and I'm not getting too hung up on the sequence of colours:

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I am being a little more careful with the colour changes in the section which looks like a braid, as I think this will be quite prominent in the final garment.

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This will take me some time to complete!  Usually I can do other things while knitting - watch TV or listen to the radio, or watch simmering dye pots, but with this I can not do anything else, so knitting it happens in short bursts.  It is completely absorbing.  But I'll bore you keep you up to date with my progress.

On a different subject - I had a number of enquiries asking if I would be running the Post Office Run Yarn Club on the Reliable Sock Yarn base, so I have now added this option to the shop.  So if sock knitting is your delight, you may be interested in this option.