Ambitious Fair Isle + Steeking

I aim to steadily improve my knitting skills and broaden my range of experiences. One technique that I haven't tried but has been on my radar for a while is steeking. I've been reading The Art of Fair Isle Knitting by Ann Feitelson and learnt that steeking has been the traditional way of shaping the armholes and neck openings in Fair Isle. Since I'm a sucker for doing things the old way, I've decided to bite the bullet and try it out.

I collected suitable yarns from my stash and thankfully I didn't have to buy any new yarn with some improvisation. The brown-pink yarn and the pale yellow one are hand dyed. The pink yarn was first dyed using avocados and then over-dyed with red and yellow food colouring.

I'm going to use the Hillhead Slipover as the base, but follow a different fair isle pattern, traced based on an item I saw online.

It's one third of the pattern I traced. I had to break it out since the software became unreliable with complex patterns. I'm also going to follow the tried and tested basic men's fair isle slipover pattern that I used for my previous projects such as Dunkirk slipover for the stitch count. I still need to figure out the decrease for steeking and I'll cross that bridge when it comes to it!

On top of steeking and the complex fair isle pattern, it'll be my first time to try out corrugated ribbing, so it's going be a handful. Wish me luck!