Finally! - F.O. - Fair Isle Sweater Finishing Part II

It is finally done! And only ten months in the making! But Toni, the teacher from my LYS who has been helping me with the finishing, told me that an adult fair isle sweater will usually take her a year to complete so I guess it's okay. And I have done a lot of other things, lots of other F.O.'s in the meantime. Here are the rest of the finishing photos. I didn't take any photos of doing the neckband, sorry about that. What I did was pick up and knit stitches just beneath my steek, then I picked up the live stitches I still had at the back of the neck and went back and forth in K2P2 ribbing like at the wrists and waist until I had about 1-3/4" of ribbing. I did the ribbing in navy. I didn't feel like having a lot of color changes at the neck and I thought the navy would look best , I consider the navy my base color for this project. Then I cut the two halves of the neck out. To prepare to cut the center steek, I first picked up and knit the stitches that would make up both sides of the button band. I did the button side first, easier, no buttonholes. I followed the striping pattern in color that I used at the waist and wrists, although with fewer rows. I had to calculate the space for the buttonholes and the placing of them before doing the other side of the button band. Once that was figured out I followed the same striping pattern as on the button side. Then it was finally time to cut the center steek!
Here we are ready to go! Dave and I even have our ceremonial shots of whiskey!

Cutting this steek was more nerve racking than the others. I was somewhat confidant that it would all work out reasonably well, but this steek felt a lot more like I was gutting my sweater and if it went wrong I was going to be hosed!

I pushed on! Starting to cut!

And here is the completed article! I don't have any photos of me securing the buttons on, but after cutting the center steek there was only two things left to do. First, I had to tack down both fringes from the center steek so the fringes were tucked away and there was no worry about unraveling. Then I had to just sew the buttons on. Toni helped me with this too, because I've never sewn into knitting before. One thing that was really serendipitous was that my original teacher from the fair isle class, Cleary, happened to be in the store yesterday and so she was able to see that I had indeed finished. She said that made her day. I'm so pleased with how it turned out. After I finished putting on the final button I looked at it and I got teary because I think it's so beautiful and it reminds me so much of my mom! I think she'll like it, or at least she will lie convincingly to me! Here is a close up of the buttons.

The buttons I bought back in February at Madrona. They are Celtic knot work. I think the silver really stands out nicely on the navy. It may seem kind of strange to have Celtic buttons on a Nordic sweater, but my mom is a Nordic Celt! My grandmother's family was from Denmark and my grandfather was from Scotland. So, there you go. Here is a kind of lengthy video of me cutting the center steek. It also has some of Winston with a sock. Dave did the filming for me this time so the voice you hear in the background is my DH.


I owe a big THANKS to Cleary for teaching the class and to Toni for helping me with the finishing!! I really learned a lot from doing this project. When it was done Toni gave me a big hug, it was great! I think I'm a better knitter, at least I hope I am, as a result. I'll make sure to let you know what happens when mom opens it, I plan on wrapping it, it is her mother's day present after all. I have to clean it first, it has traveled a lot and been loved a lot by Winston's hair!

I hope she likes it!