bet ya didn't know...

one of the problems when knitting fairisle with long floats, it’s hard to get it perfect,

bad cats, sad cats!

especially with Silver Reed machines. The second colour that isn’t knitting, over more than eight needles, begins to feel left out and wants to jump in on the backside of the second colour, especially predominant when there are a few bent needles. Not even seriously bent, just latches that are maybe a little sticky! On the first cat blank, I had sort of forgotten this – you don’t really see it while you’re knitting unless you’re aware and really looking  for it but when the thing comes off you can see a few places where it makes a vertical line on the front of the fabric. I’m hoping it’ll wash out. Ha! ha! We know that never happens! Anyway, it’s not serious enough to rip out or abandon the whole thing - other people, a.k.a non-knitters, won’t even notice.

good cats on left

2nd cats after needles changed

Toward the top of the piece, I did spot these vague lines and made note of the needle numbers. Swapped out ten or so needles and did a little work on the stitch pattern to eliminate some of the larger solid colour areas. The second bunch of cats came out much better. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t toss the needles – there was nothing really wrong with them and, even though I’ve been to your house and see that you put the bent needles back in at the end of the bed and I’ve made fun of you for that, I just put these aside and they will be my backup stash – no point in putting them at the ends as I’m using the full width of the needle bed!
Oh yeah, and if you’re going to be knitting 200 stitches wide by 350 rows at T9 fairisle, you should stop halfway through and check the clamps. At about row 250, fortunately the carriage was almost to the end of the row when the right-hand side clamp let go! I was quick enough to realize what was happening, grabbed the ribber, held it up and got the carriage to the end without dropping anything! Thanked the machine-knitting gods, re-adjusted and re-tightened everything and continued! Repeated this between each fairisle piece!

the sleeve works for me!

;-) ok, I'm pretty happy!
In case you're just joining me, the reason I start with a sleeve is because I'm gonna cheat a bit and the sleeve can take a bit of a beating. I'll explain. I have some experience behind me here - this is not my first or second garment...I don't want to bother with the regular swatch, especially for 4 colour fairisle - a swatch would likely take almost as much time as the sleeve and I do know that this yarn at T8 for stockinette and T9 for the fairisle rows (when mixing plain stockinette and fairisle, as a general rule of thumb, by going up one full stitch number for the fairisle rows, you'll get the same stitch gauge on the fairisle as the plain rows) my gauge will be something in the range of 28-30 sts and 38-40 rows to 10 cm/4 inch and because a sleeve isn't quite as crucial in fit, I can usually get away with using the sleeve as my tester and making adjustments for length and width in the body pieces if necessary. I made the sleeve using 28 sts and 38 rows, note the long cuff which I can turn back if it's way too long...Not that I'm giving you full license to do away with swatches, use your judgment and know your limitations - if you're not sure of the colour choices, make a swatch first. If you're not sure of how many plain rows you want where, make a regular swatch.
Anyway, I won't bore you with how many times I had to rip out a row because I forgot to change the cam to fairisle or forgot to change the stitch dial from 8 to 9, or had the colours in backwards, but it did show me that for someone with a lot of experience, my time away from the machine - even though I had knit this stitch pattern before, it was a  while ago and remembering things like dealing with the long floats on the Greek key portion: two choices - tuck the long float on the midway needle before the next row is knit (which it does tell you in the Knitwords original pattern), or, latch them up every 10 rows or so if you forgot to do the first one!
I'll make the second sleeve the same, adjust my calculations for the body pieces according to the actual measurements (30 sts and 40 rows) and think about pockets and the hood. Of course, you know this is a cardigan but I've already planned to do a button-up front - need to change it up - kinda sick of zippers for now...