It has been both a very good, and a very frustrating, knitting day ...

First, the good! I found a very easy Fair Isle pattern and decided It .Was.Time to try something new. I've always been frightened of the concept of stranding. I shouldn't have been! Fair Isle is extremely fun to knit up, and I have been going great guns this evening with it. Alison is concerned because I am knitting her socks right now, and she is concerned about the distracting potential of Fair Isle :-). However, it is a nice change of pace to be working with heavier yarn, rather than fingering weight. Here is what I have so far ...

The colours are wrong here in the evening light ... it's a lovely, rich, greyed (denim-y) blue. I think it's going to look charcoal grey in the post.

Now the bad ... yesterday I looked at FOUR stores to find the right colour of blue. Finally I tracked it down at Rosehaven Farm Store in Picton. The yarn was on the sale table, but is very good quality (wool/silk/cashmere). About two rows before this photo was taken, I started running into broken plies ... plys ...(hmmm, neither look right). In six different places. SO I have to go back to the yarn store, and find out what to do. I'm not happy about expensive wool (even on sale) if I have to reconstruct it regularly.

Oh well, at least the process of learning the Fair Isle was fun! Just hoping I can actually finish a hat at this point :-).

(Edited to add: Feb 8) Rosehaven Farm Store continues to be my favourite place to support. One quick phone call and I received instructions on how to frog back to a woven-in needle (who knew you could do that????), and a free ball of yarn to replace the damaged one PLUS I can keep the damaged one, cut off the weak parts and use the good stuff in case I require more yarn for the hat. PLUS in the middle of fixing the hat, my 24" cable from KnitPicks broke (the cable pulled out of the metal end). I transferred to another cable, made a call to the 1-800 number for KnitPicks, and a package of 2 more cables is already winging it's way to Forty Food Road :-). I'm blessed today by excellent service. Now if only we could get the rest of our wood delivered ... :-).