Island hopping Wool - Shetland to Mersea

Marie Wallin's Fairisle Club Three - Lerwick

::My beautiful box of wool has arrived and now there is a flurry of activity sorting it out, getting everything organised and starting a swatch for gauge::

 ::This is the inspiring Club design and it looked so inviting - so let's dive in!::

::All the scrummy, yummy wool in gorgeous Shetland inspired colours and a folder with the pattern inside and the canvas project bag::What a wonderful project this is going to be to improve my colour work technique and to learn new skills too::

::So the first thing I did was to start my organisation and in addition to my folder where I am storing newsletters, the pattern, and notebook, I decided I wanted to make some cards in which I could record the colour name and number and the pattern symbol for that wool and the number of balls for each colour::I also put in a few strands of the wool with it's name so that I could refer to it if the ball band went astray::

::I took my inspiration from the Quince & Co colour cards but obviously tweaked it so that they would reflect the information I wanted to store and also to keep the aesthetic of the Fairisle Club Three:: 

::Another reason for going a bit above and beyond was that I am trying to learn new computer skills and to develop my knowledge of pages on my mac::

::I think it will be good to have a reminder of this beautiful project in the years ahead::

::I have already learnt some more about swatching techniques::how to knit a swatch flat using circular needles::how to work out the number of rows and stitches you need for your swatch::

::Another Ravelry user, Anne, had a very interesting blog post here about "following the straight and narrow in stranded knitting" which makes very good reading::

::I am already seeing lots of knitting expressions coming up on the Ravelry forums for this project that I am going to have to explore::"taking up"::"throwing"::

 ::Here I am then all set to start Chart A for my swatch for gauge::what is it about a new ball of wool and that first row that makes a knitter so happy::simple things::simple living::bliss::