Tickle Mine Pink

Another Debbie Bliss Fair Isle “swirly goodness” to borrow from Pink Berry, I haven’t had this much fun with pink since I was a little girl.  Thank you Beata for all your inspiration! Same pattern as below, but this time I took Mary Jane’s advice and left my peerie fix between the snowflakes out and sure enough all was well after blocking, no funny ripples.  I trapped the unused color behind every stitch and I think that helped a bit too.  I tried to capture the colors from the little girl’s cardigan from Family Knits but I’m not sure if that pink in the background is still available.  (Laughing Hens recommended 601, which I had, and went with, but, you can see, the colors are not the same.) Perhaps 601 was the closest substitute, and indeed, its fine, perfectly acceptable, but not the same….and so it goes with Fair Isle knitting.  The colors were not listed by number for the pattern, so god and perhaps Debbie herself only knows what that color was.  I suspect they made the model with older discontinued yarn, but I would be delighted to be proven wrong if anyone has any clues for me.  I’ve made six of these hats now, enjoying swatching the colors out and seeing the pattern come alive.  I also made this hat to see if it would be something I’d enjoy making for an entire cardigan because I fell in love with the little girl sweater, but its just not quite the same loveliness without the right background pink that you see in the photo for the little girl’s cardigan.  Perhaps one day I’ll figure out what that color was!  If anyone happens to know I’d love to get your thoughts.  I have lots more ideas for various color combinations but I am loosing the motivation to make more hats, have no desire to work on mittens with dpn’s, would love to make a scarf but have no fair isle pattern for size 3 needles (any ideas anyone?).  I am thinking that I should just make my own and use moss stitch to prevent the sides and edge from curling but I’m too chicken to risk failure (i have alot of those!).  I ordered some yarn for the holiday week-end to make a cute little makeup purse (Holiday Knits) in candycane white, pink and red in Debbie Bliss cashmerino DK but it looks like it won’t arrive in time until the New Year’s week-end.  A little anticlimactic but nonetheless hopefully it will still feel like the right thing to work on for next week-end.