Fun with fairisle

Well, I had a fun weekend playing with the patterning on the KH965i, the Cog being employed elsewhere for the day. I've long hankered over making a sideways-knitted fairisle sweater, and having managed to acquire a simple Wendy Phillips pattern, the creative urge just overtook me on Saturday.  All went well for a while, but the patterning mechanism starting to make a noise akin to a washing machine with rocks in (ok I'm guessing here, but it wasn't good!). I took the back parts off a few times but couldn't see anything amiss. Eventually I oiled both drum pivots, and the rotating black bar, and it seems a lot better. There WAS a bit of fluff back there but nothing out of the ordinary. 

The sweater in question has patterned bands, I'm in love with it already, despite black not really being my colour. I'm using pink and blue Magicolour for the fairisle. One more sleeve and cuff to go and then just sewing up. I over-complicated programming the pattern for the welts - it's much easier just to start from row 17 than it is to try and extricate the pattern if you only need one repeat. Still, I'm pleasantly surprised at how easy the machine is to program. The manual is still terrible though! 

If I make this sweater again, I might flip the pattern at the centre neck to make it more symmetrical, and posibbly pick a pattern with less long floats or use the ladder back technique. What with carrying the unused colour up the side, there was already enough going on. I fancy doing this for a Christmas sweater, though I'm tempted to swap to a V neck. I'm not a great wearer of round necks. I had a few false starts - a mispatterned band, and a sleeve that was 25 stitches too narrow. Oops. 

Pictures to follow shortly! 

Oh, and the KHC / two colour tuck problem I had in the last post seems to have evaporated. Performance anxiety perhaps? Who knows!

The circular cardigan is in time out. I cannot seem to keep my increases in order, one would think it would be easy. I seem to be tinking more than knitting on it. Ugh. 

In non-crafting news, we paid to stream the Black Sabbath charity concert this weekend, having failed to get tickets. £25 (£33 after other charges - yeah, there's always someone making a quick buck) and you get zero toilet queues and a better choice of food and drink. What's not to like? The Cog streamed the first half (that we missed) yesterday. I wonder whether Oasis thought about streaming their concerts? Could be quite a money-spinner!

Current mood: enthralled