Frustrations with Fair Isle

I love Fair Isle. I do. I love the "bang for the buck" with color, etc.

But, I'm a little concerned over the uneven stitches. They are not puckering, and I don't have floats because I use the method espoused by Philosopher's Wool, so yarn is caught every other stitch.

Will soaking and a little gentle "guidance" during blocking resolve this? Using black and white, there is bound to be some view-through and I'm not so worried about that.

The other frustration is, I got complacent by the time of the third row of skulls, and made the same error 4 times, once in each panel repeat, because I really didn't pay attention to the chart. I tried laddering it back, but with 6 rows x 2 strands, trying to minimize floats and the idea that I would have to do it *4* times, it truly was faster to just frog back the rounds and do it over. I'm back to where I was, and I see I made the VERY SAME mistake. This time, it stays.

We Be Pirates

I bought the yarn for this MONTHS ago. Being in the middle of a baby aran sweater binge (working on two at once), I decided I need a diversion. Diversity, they're always saying it's a good thing, right?

So, I've been working on this for a couple days, and it actually starts to look like the photo on the pattern. People at work are commenting, even the more religious/conservative among our group, that they thought it was, well, at least, "interesting."

I get on the bus tonight, headed for home and sit next to a woman about my age, maybe a little older. It is now clearly visible that there are skulls knitted into this project. This woman was looking at me as if the next thing to show up in the knitting, all shroud-of-Turin-like, would be the phrase "I (heart) Satan."

What gets me is, how did she know?