moved to the fair-isle

After languishing for many moons finished half-way through the color work on the front, we have:

It's amazing the sins a good wash can hide in colorwork.

Granted, the point of this project was to be a learning experience (and I did learn - I learned on *the last* row of color, that I need to hold the yarn wrapped around my middle finger on the bottom side, and the yarn wrapped around my ring finger on the top, despite how unintuitive this sounds). The technique on the color is nasty. Lumpy. Mess. However, the yarn (skye tweeD) is very sticky. Annoyingly so. Thank goodness it washes up decently or I'd have wasted a purchase. And it's not too ugly for it's intended purpose as a good, warm, work sweater. I did have to send the finished colorwork through the wash to be sure of that though.

and the back, just to prove how terrible I really did with this. Note the little ends in the middle? That's where I teased out a giant loop of extra yarn in the middle, then gave up and cut it and wove the ends in. This is also, cooincidentally, has better color than the others.

So why the fair isle? Well, the socks are finished. and Here

Is my progress on FP as of my last post on the matter. Not shabby. But wait a minute - where are the needles? Is this some strange needle-less entrelac? No...I got mixed up on when to do which triangles, and it's a rip-out. Except I could never reuse the yarn, so I just yanked out the needle in disgust, cut the yarn and cast on again.

But I've been less motivated. At least taking the mulligan off the needles allowed me to stretch it sufficiently to ascertain that it will, in fact, be wide enough. Unfortunately, it's not made any progress.

Oh, and I've been on a needle breaking spree.

Two of the #0 rosewoods snapped in normal sock-knitting usage. I know, I could probably return them since I bought them a week ago, but really, I was taking a gamble that something like that would be structurally sound, and I lost. I figure it comes with the territory and I'll cut my losses and learn my lesson. I'll sand down the points on the longer pieces and use them for less strenuous jobs like stitch holding and the like.
Then...I stepped on the circular I'm using for the fair isle. You can see the (failed) attempts at a hot-glue fix in there. Think I've gotta bite the bullet and replace 'em. Which is doubly ironic, since one of the reasons I decided to finish the fair-isle was that it was on the same size needles as the handpaintedyarn I'd been winding for the past ever. (the other was that then I would have two sweaters with approximately the same complication level and intended purpose otn simultateously, which doesn't do me any good).