I love these little elephants, or Ellybobs, as they are called in the pattern. It’s nice to have some contrast color making an entrance because I was getting a little bored with just the dark Velvet Olive Jitterbug. The Shibui Sock elephants make a nice little pop of color.

ellybob

According to the label, the color number for the Shibui Sock is 5677, but I can’t find this color number associated with any of their current colors. It looks nearly identical to the Wasabi colorway (7495). I’m guessing the color I have was discontinued. I purchased it back in 2007 at ImagiKnit in San Francisco.

ellybob-3

After re-learning how to weave the floats and getting comfortable with the tension, the Ellybobs have gone pretty smoothly. I’ve made little arrows on the charts to help me remember which direction I’m going for each row. Anything that takes some of the thinking out of the chart is fine by me. Fair Isle is so fun when you get going.

This is my first time doing Fair Isle on a knit and a purl side. I’ve only done it in the round prior to this. It’s not so bad on the purl rows. It’s definitely slower, as purling is for me, and I have to pay more attention to my tension. That has been my primary concern, but I think weaving the floats in helps me pay attention to this. If you want to know more about weaving in floats when working Fair Isle patterns, I put together a little tutorial to help. I first learned about weaving floats from this post, but that post only addressed Fair Isle when knitting. For the Ellybob Cardigan you need to weave floats on both the knit and purl side.

Back to the knitting!