Fair Isle knitting for the 21st Centuary

A new sweater for the new season! I'm rather pleased with the way this has turned out. I wanted to knit a traditional Fair Isle with a contemporary look. A short, shaped sweater with no ribs  or seams and pearl beads knitted into the yoke pattern.

Using  "Knitting in the Old Way"  as my guide (again!) I planned a seamless garment. As always, the workflow begins with tension swatches for both the plain and patterned areas, using  traditional Shetland 2ply jumper yarns from Jameson and Smith. They still produce a large range of dyed and natural colours, which have been in use for decades.  The main colour is such a lovely peachy pink and so reminiscent of the 1950's. It is also just the right colour to match a skirt I want to wear this jumper with.

There were lots of calculations for the size and shaping all worked out and written in my notebook. I also needed to make sure that the Fair Isle patterns would line up in the centre of the front and repeat on the number of stitches I was using, so as not to have a funny line at the join of the round. This involved making a long strip of squared paper and marking out some of the pattern starting at the centre front stitch and working towards the edge. Then I could go back the the chart I'd drawn and be sure that the round would line up correctly, which it did!

The beading was a bit of a challenge. Getting the beads onto the knitting yarn involved threading them onto beading wire and then making a loop, like a giant needle threader, and threading them onto the knitting wool. As the bead holes were tiny this process frayed the knitting yarn quite a bit, so I used two balls of the same colour for the beaded rows. One ball for stitches with beads and the other for the plain pattern in that colour. This meant I had three strands of wool to manage, but it also means that if the yarn frays too much and breaks I shall only have to repair the beading and not the main fabric of the garment.

It was worth the effort …

Knitting with Colour and Stash Busting

After all that navy blue I feel the need to work with colour. These are some fairisle and intatsia samples from my collection. Some of you may recognise the patterns from the work of Kaffe Fassett, the grand master of colour and one of my heros.

The diamond sample was an early piece which I made back in 1982, after attending one of Kaffe's wonderful weekend workshops, which really did open up a whole new world of knitting for me. The colour changes are quite abrupt in places but as you can see from some of the other samples, blending improved with practice.

You may also be able to see that I have used 2 or 3 strands of different coloured fine yarns knitted together to create a more interesting colour texture that can be achieved with a single double knitting or chunky yarn. It's fascinating to see how one colour can change simply by putting it with a complementary colour. I spend quite a lot of time choosing colour pallets. It inspires me to knit it up and see what happens. Sometime the unexpected results prove very interesting!

 I never throw scraps of yarn away. I try to keep them in boxes, sorted by colour. Odd balls of lovely yarns will always get used, eventually.

If you'd like to find out more and learn how to turn all those left over bits of yarn into gorgeous colourful samples I shall be running a half day workshop on Saturday October 1st from 10 am to 12.45 pm. You can click the link below for more information and book online

Texere Tribe


You really don't need to be an expert knitter for this. As long as you can do knit and purl stitches you'll be fine. Smooth and even tension comes with practice, this workshop is about opening our eyes to colour, having fun and sharing.

Seamless Guernsey Sweater

Here it is, a traditional seamless fisherman's sweater, with shoulder straps, underarm gussets and a monogram in the bottom right corner.  It is knitted in 5 ply Guernsey wool using the same cable and moss stitch pattern as I used for the cabled jacket described in a previous post Fitted Cabled Jacket. I wanted to knit it in the round with no seams to sew and no tight cast off edges.  All the stitches are threaded onto a contrasting colour yarns and picked up later when needed.

I used an excellent book for this project. "Knitting in the Old Way" by Pricilla A Gibson-Roberts and  Deborah Robson. It is a treasure trove of information containing plans for numerous styles of sweater construction, which can easily be adapted.