Fair Isle Knitting

I have always loved Fair Isle knitting. In fact it is one of my favorite techniques in knitting and more so now that I’m a spinner. I’m sure you are wondering why there should be a connection between spinning and Fair Isle knitting any more than spinning and Lace knitting, or spinning and Aran knitting. I like Fair Isle knitting because I, as a spinner, tend to enjoy trying various types of fibre. It is a pleasure to go to spinning vendors and pick up 100 grams of this and 100 grams of that and take my many little samples home and spin them up. I tend to have a ball of this and a ball of that. So when I look in my basket I find that there are little bits of many colours and textures but not enough to do something like a sweater in any one given colour. That is where Fair Isle knitting comes in.

We tend to think of Fair Isle knitting in this day and age, as any knitting that uses more than one colour. However, this is not the case. Fair Isle knitting actually comes from the Island of Fair which is sandwiched between the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands off the North coast of Scotland. I went on the Fair Isle travel web site and this is what they had to say:

The real ‘Fair Isle’ knitwear

The term ‘Fair Isle Knitting' is now used worldwide for a type of stranded colour knitting with horizontal bands of geometric patterns. But this unique style developed on Fair Isle long ago, when local knitters discovered that fine yarns stranded into a double layer produce durable, warm, yet lightweight garments.

For hundreds of years demand for hand-knitting kept Fair Isle women busy. Islanders traded with passing ships, bartering their homemade textiles and fresh produce for goods they couldn’t make themselves.

Today the only source of the genuine article is still Fair Isle, where a small cooperative - Fair Isle Crafts - produces traditional and contemporary sweaters on hand-frame machines, quality-controlled and labeled with Fair Isle's own trade mark.

The traditional colours of red, blue, brown, yellow and white, combined with the original patterns, were much sought after for their unique value, but in the 1920s Fair Isle sweaters knitted in the natural wool colours of brown, grey, fawn and white became highly fashionable.

Elizabeth Zimmermann also said that “Fair Isle knitting uses distinctive pattern of “OXO” in one band followed by a skinnier band of stranded knitting where two or more colours are used, however, it is the OXO pattern that makes true Fair Isle knitting distinctive.

The Norwegian use double stranded knitting (knitting where the second colour is carried across the back) as do many other countries, but they have their own distinctions that are significantly different from Fair Isle.

The Fair Isle knitters were able to sustain themselves in times of hardship because their knitting was in high demand for its distinction. The men of the household would take their boats out to passing ships where they would trade their wives knitting among other things and barter for goods that they could not attain otherwise. In fact it was just such a trip in the late 1800s that became a tragedy for the Fair Islanders when two of four boats were caught in a storm and one was lost with all hands while the other made it back to shore with only some of its crew still alive. This was devastating for the small population of the Island and has left a significant impact, with a monument left to the dedication of those men lost in that accident.

So, if you enjoy stranded knitting, then check out the many Fair Isle patterns, as a way of using up your odds and ends. I like to adapt the patterns not just for “jumpers and vests” which are the traditional product but for afghans and shawls, or mittens and sox. You never know where the adventure of Fair Isle will take you.