An Over-complicated Fair Isle Infant Sweater

Debbie Bliss Cathay Yarn

I got some gorgeous yarn while I was in Washington. We stopped at a cute shop called the Wool Station in Bellingham. They had a nice selection of washable wools, cottons and other blends. They had some nice novelty yarns, but they focused more on simple yarns with great textures and colors -- my kinda yarn. I liked it.

As I mentioned before, I bought some Debbie Bliss Cathay Yarn in orange (04), yellow (05), green (06) and off-white (02). I really like the colors together. They've got a bold color but with a soft hue (I really have no idea if those statements make sense together... but it sounds about right).

I decided I wanted to make a neat fair isle pattern for the sweater. I really like the pattern I designed. But honestly I think I made it WAY too complicated... or maybe -- if I do it as intarsia instead of fair-isle, it'll be easier. The problem is that it's taking WAY too long to switch between so many colors on each row. Intarsia's not going to help that... It may help clean up all the stranding that I have on the back of the work (and in turn help me loosen up the guage)... but it really won't help the slowness issue... ugh.

At this point I'm thinking I should frog the whole thing and start over with a simpler pattern. Maybe I should just do a nice bold zigzag like I did on this hat. Or maybe come up with another fair isle pattern where I limit myself to only two-colors per row. I really do like the look of this pattern... but I just don't think I have the patience to finish it. Plus, with how tight the guage is getting, I don't think it will fit right -- and it'll kill me if I put this much work into it and it turns out crappy.

Ahhh... what to do what to do... I think I'm frogging it. (For those of you who don't know -- to "frog" a piece of knitting means to unravel it. I've heard its called "frogging" because you rip-it rip-it rip-it.)

The over-complicated fair-isle pattern.	The front of my sweater so far, notice the guage gets tighter when I get more stranding in the work
	The back of my sweater so far, there's a LOT of stranding.