(Not really)
Fluorescent Florence
June 17th, 2007, 3:25 pm
This project has yielded a couple of surprises!
I wanted to knit something in either Rowan 4 ply cotton or Cotton Glace. After scanning the current Rowan magazine, I thought I’d have a flip through some of the old ones and ended up with Rowan Magazine 35 in my hand.
This is one of the best Rowan summer books I’ve seen. It must be 3 or 4 years old now but a lot of the designs are still very current. Although I’m not so sure about the “bleached fishing net poncho thing” on the front cover though!! 
I stumbled upon this little beauty and decided it was just the thing for this summer. It’s called Florence by Sarah Dallas.
Hmmmm….what colour?? I know that that shade of yellow look terrible on me - it makes me looks jaundiced and corpse like - not this summer’s look I think! 
I chose my colours from shade cards on the internet - not something I usually do….hence the surprise! I decided to keep the same colours as the pattern for the Fair Isle part and change the yellow for a muted orange colour called “pick and mix”.
Have you ever seen an orange highlighter pen? No? Maybe one of those high visibility, motorway maintenance worker’s jackets?? That’s the “muted orange” colour I ended up with! 
Fortunately, my skin tone seems to work with brilliant orange (I quite like it actually) so once I got over the shock of opening up my parcle of retina burning loveliness, I got on with the fun part - knitting Florence!
The contrast around the bottom of the hem is done by casting on in blue then changing to the main colour for the first rib row. That was new for me. Not difficult or challenging but it’s always fun to do something new!!
The Fair Isle part was tricky. Most of the stitches are groups of three or less. I started trying the weave the yarn every other stitch thinking it would be neater but my Fair Isle isn’t that neat. I just managed to pull and pucker it. I tried just carrying (floating?) the yarn over three stitches and only catching it (weaving?) in one the one row where there is a group of five stitches - this worked much better.
Take a look…
There are a lot of ends to darn in though - yurck! 
If I made this again I would knit the two fronts and the back as one piece as far as the armholes to save darning and make the sides less bulky from all that darning.
Surprise number 2 was just how fast this has knit up! The Fair Isle part was very slow for me. I took my time wanted it to be neat. Once I was onto the lace pattern (I think it’s a variation on cat’s paw lace) was very straight forward and grew very fast. Look how far I’ve got already!!
Just finish sewing in the sleeves, knit the button bands and collar. Then go button choosing! 
