Fair Isle, Plaid and The Viking

Well, I am almost 2/3 done with the body of the second miniature fair isle sweater - this one looks a lot better as I figured out how the pattern had to work around the steeks (one of which is the bump you see in the fabric below.) It went a lot quicker than I thought it would! Two more rows, then one more 10 row chart repeat and I'm done. I have to do the sleeves which are on a different chart, and are on double points, but I'm telling myself it won't be that hard.

I sat outside with FatCat and worked on it

And here is the result!

Here's another vest I started for Uncle Frank for Christmas - it is from the Rowan Plaid collection and I really like the colorway. It is more easily discernable on the knit side (as this is in reverse stockinette for the back with cables on the front side only) but the colors are gray, light tan and brown. I'm thinking I will eventually make myself a sweater out of it - I liked the green/brown/cream colorway of it that I made "Flood" (another pattern in the book) from but next time will know enough to pay more attention to the finished measurement than the "fits size" - as it was very large when finished.

And tomorrow night I start my sewing class and will get reacquainted with my friend "The Viking". It is an older machine from the late 80s that I bought on EBay for about $300. I love it though and everything works great. I would eventually like to buy one of their new fancy machines that do embroidery and almost sew without any human intervention - but I have to see if I really get into sewing again first. We'll see how this class is.

The last one was really basic and we didn't even use a pattern - did a bias cut skirt that was basically a big rectangle. This one we'll be doing a field trip to JoAnn's or Hancock Fabrics to buy a pattern, thread and fabric to use over the next 8 weeks. I've done a tote bag and a skirt using a pattern from the Sew Fast Sew Easy book, but haven't actually had success with buying a pattern from a fabric store and working with it. I have a lot of easy patterns but I haven't taken them out of the package yet. Wish me luck!