Dubai Shawl!

I held the shawl photo in my Pinterest for couple of years. It reminded me of a popular middle eastern type of head and neck cover usually worn by Arab men. perhaps without the tassels :)

 The Dubai shawl can only be purchased as a printed Danish book collection 'Around' by Susie Haumann. There is no English translation as far as I know. Luckily for me I happen to know a dear knitter who speaks Danish fluently and helped tackle the way of increasing stitches in the shawl. The chart is really self explanatory.

I used the original yarn for it, double held Isager Alpaca 1, a soft alapca lace in light gray and French blue. The cast on to the shawl took few days, there are a lot of stitches to cast on and I wasn't happy with how big the shawl was so eliminated about a quarter of the stitches and also change the cast on border to a garter band to prevent it from curling. The shawl is still very big and incredibly warm with all that fair isle.

I wish I had mastered the holding of two yarns in one hand when fair isle knitting so instead it became a slow labour of love. and the results are indeed so worth it.

Ingrid !

I was in a mood for some fair isle and this pullover fitted the bill. But after noticing this test knit, wow, my heart just went faster and I went stash diving. I was using fingering weight yarn, a bit thinner than requested so went 2 sizes up. I have tons of sock yarn and I tend to hoard all my leftovers 'just in case..' so was happy to reduce (ever so slightly) it.

Quickly casting on I managed to somehow omit about 50 stitches, and only at arms point did I notice that the fitting leaves much to be desired- way too tight (see pic below)-no room for arms.

The 2nd yoke attempt went a bit better. I put some modification as I went along- lowered the fair isle band and omitted some of it's pattern. I didn't bother with the sleeves and hem fair isle. I used some Orkney white angora and rowan kid silk haze in grey to give some halo to the fair isle band. My colours are almost all neutral except the dark purple and some dots in peach.
So easy to wear but still draws the eyes despite the simplicity.