Stranded!

I decided it was ABOUT TIME I did some stranded, or fair isle, knitting. I indulged a bit at the yarn shop yesterday--first yarn shop purchase in 2 months!! I got 2 skeins of the new Spud & Chloe sock yarn, Datchsun and Calypso, aka brown and light blue, and I'm going to make myself a Selbu Modern. I did a bit of trolling around Ravelry in the forums and the Stranded group and got a few tips, including this helpful video.

I determined to be successful in this attempt, so I've done a right and proper gauge swatch:

I worked my gauge swatch in the round--it's more of a gauge tube. I worked one side of the tube with a US 1 1/2 Addi (pictured below), and the other side with a US 2 1/2 Addi (pictured above). The 2 1/2 side ended up at gauge, so that's the size I'm going to use for the main portion of the hat.

I worked part of the gauge swatch with floats on the inside of the work, and part of it with the woven technique. In the floats section, I was worried about keeping my floats loose enough so that the fabric doesn't pucker. I was less concerned about my tension in the woven section, but in the end I liked the feel of the non-woven section better. In this pic, the woven section is in the middle, with unwoven sections on the top and bottom:

By the end of the gauge tube, I was much more comfortable working the 2 colors. I'm holding the mail color (brown) in my left hand, my usual way of holding yarn, and holding the blue in my right hand. It took a few inches of knitting before I felt like I wasn't a total right-handy klutz, but now I feel like I've gotten the hang of it.

Now to cast on for the actual hat!