Adventures with Fair Isle - Follow-up

I was thinking about the post I wrote a few days ago with information about all of the sources upon which I drew to help me learn Fair Isle, and I realized that I left out a few. Recently, I found a great blog that inspired me to try Fair Isle again since the writer had knitted some glorious sweaters and had also taken the time to share her knowledge with others. The blog is called By Gum, By Golly, and the writer, Tasha, is an incredibly skilled knitter and seamstress. She loves vintage clothing, so her Fair Isle work is inspired by vintage Fair Isle patterns. I found her tutorial on stranded knitting incredibly helpful since she focuses on several aspects about which most beginners wonder:

• How to hold the yarn using various techniques, depending on which suits the knitter best (I especially like that she admitted to dropping yarns, being careful not to let them twist, when she first began stranding. She asserts that this is actually a valid technique and that if one is comfortable using it, they should continue to do so. I have actually heard of prolific Fair Isle knitters using this technique, so it was nice to see it validated. As an FYI, I actually use the two-handed technique just because this is how I began.)
• How to strand the yarn to avoid "puckers" and to produce "even stranding" (more on this below)
• How to choose colors for vintage patterns

Tasha's writing on this subject has been especially helpful to me in calming me down a little bit about my worries that my stranding might be too tight (yes, I tend to be a perfectionist, but I always call myself the perfectionist who can never get anything perfect :) ). I can clearly see that my stranding on the wrong side looks very even and is not tight in any way, yet the front side still looks a bit uneven. Here is a photo of the wrong side to show the stranding:

It looks pretty even to me, and I even see a few spots where the floats actually look a little bit loose. That doesn't concern me, though, because Elizabeth Zimmerman always says in her videos "better too loose than too tight" because you can "snug up" loose floats. Please feel free to share your opinion if you see something here that indicates it might be too tight. Now here is the front.

I am fairly happy with it, but I keep having sneaking concerns that it might be a bit puckery. Here is where Tasha's By Bum, By Golly blog really helps quiet my inner-critic; she shared a post of the before- blocking and after-blocking photos, and the difference in evenness is distinct. Here is the link to the post: before and after blocking. This blog is the only place I have seen photographic evidence of the wonders of blocking on Fair Isle, so I am so grateful for Tasha for sharing. I am paying it forward by making you all aware of it, so hopefully I can help calm your own inner-critic.

Another source of constant help and inspiration to me has been WendyKnits. Wendy's writing on knitting has been so important to me for over 10 years, ever since I found her blog back in the very early days of blog writing. As you can see, she is very skilled at Fair Isle, and if you look at her archives, you will see that she has knitted many of the Alice Starmore Fair Isle designs. Her work is amazing! If you read the posts in the archives for some of her Alice Starmore designs (Mara comes to mind immediately), you will see that she talks about Fair Isle technique in many of them. 

Lastly, I just noticed that Spring edition of Interweave Knits has an article on Fair Isle knitting, and it seems to provide a lot of great information on it. I have yet to read it, but I am looking forward to a quiet evening without distraction to curl up and see what it has to offer.

As you can see from the scant progress made on the Ivy League Vest in the pictures above, I haven't had a lot of time lately to work on Fair Isle knitting since work has been busy, and family life has had me on the run. As a result, most nights I have needed something cozy yet simple to help me wind down from the day, which has allowed me to make significant progress on this glorious crocheted afghan by Lucy of Attic24, the Granny Stripe Blanket.

I am so grateful that I found Attic24 earlier this year since it has rekindled my love of crochet with the amazingly bright, adorable projects that Lucy shares with her followers. Being able to work on something colorful and warm in the evenings of this bitterly cold winter has been a blessing. Fair Isle also brings color to my life, but it isn't something I can do very easily in the evenings when I am tired since I am still too new to it for it to be mindless. Crochet, especially this type of repetitive, double crochet stitch, row-by-row crochet, really fills my need for color and mindlessness in the evenings. 

If any of you knitters have never tried crochet, I highly encourage you to do so. It is a lot of fun being "bi-crafty" (an expression I heard on one of the podcasts I listen to, but unfortunately I can't remember which one in order to give proper credit). I am loving crochet again so much that I have ordered a large quantity of Stylecraft Special DK (at Lucy's recommendation) on sale from Deramores so that I can begin another one of her afghan patterns as soon as I finish this one. I am considering either the Ripple Blanket or the Granny Patchwork Blanket. Crocheters out there, which one do you recommend more? They are both wonderful, so just let me know in the comments which one you like best if you have done them both or even if you are just looking at the pictures!

Happy knitting and crocheting, everyone!

Adventures with Fair Isle, Part III

I haven't disappeared in case anyone was wondering! Sorry to keep anyone who might be interested in reading more waiting, but it has been a busy week with work and the kids' schedules. I knew when I began this blog over vacation that it might be tricky keeping it going once work got busy again, but I am determined to hang in there. I am really having fun with this, and I hope those of you who are checking in from time to time are too. Please leave a comment to say hello or to add your two cents if you would like to do so. Just click on the area that currently says "no comments" and help me change that to "1 comment" or more. :)

So here is what I have been working on in the few spare minutes I have each evening -- something mindless and soothing: Granny Stripes from the delightful Lucy of the Attic24 blog.

We have been living through a very challenging winter here in Ohio, so I find the colors in this blanket to be soothing yet lively in contrast to the greys of winter. Lucy talks about "soul colors" on her blog, and anyone who knows her blog knows that her soul colors are deliciously bright and cheerful. My tastes run a little more to autumn colors, though, so this blanket provides me just enough pep to lighten my spirits yet make me feel at home.

Onto Fair Isle! I haven't been doing much of it this week since my mind hasn't been in shape in the evenings for any more challenges, but I have been thinking a lot about how I learned the little I do know. I want to share with all of you some of the wonderful sources of information that helped me to get to the point where I feel confident to try to knit a Fair Isle vest. Here are some of the books that have been my guide over the years:

Like many, my first introduction to Fair Isle techniques was Alice Starmore. Many years ago when I wanted to read about Fair Isle, her original book on the topic, Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting, was out of print and cost around $200 to buy on ebay. I couldn't begin to think about forking over that kind of cash for it, so I checked it out of the library and read and reread it, hating to part with it when it was due. Foolishly, I let an opportunity to buy this book at the regular price of $40 when I saw it in a knitting shop along side Alice Starmore's original Aran Knitting. I wanted both books very badly, but since Aran knitting is my first love and my true love, I decided I could only afford one of the two books -- it had to be Aran Knitting. I regretted not buying both within a week, went back to the shop to buy Fair Isle Knitting, only to find it had been sold that very morning to someone else. I will regret that mistake for the rest of my knitting life. I have since been able to buy the reprint of Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting much to my delight and as much as I love it, I still wish I had the beautiful, hard-cover original with the picture of Mara being knitted on the cover. 

I encourage anyone who is interested in Fair Isle to buy the reprint of this book immediately for the following reasons:

• It provides an excellent historical account of Fair Isle and the island from which it developed.
• It discusses patterns in detail, including how to choose them to create your own designs. It also includes many pattern motifs.
• It provides an in-depth discussion of Fair Isle techniques such as stranding using the two-handed method that A.S. recommends and steeking. The illustrations used are excellent and easy to follow.
• It provides an in-depth illustration of Alice Starmore's inspirations for her designs. 
• It provides many patterns for sweaters and hats.

My second "bible" of Fair Isle knitting is Ann Feitelson's The Art of Fair Isle Knitting. I adore this book. In many ways it has been even more helpful to me than A.S.'s book. Feitelson does an excellent job of providing history and techniques, but she even goes one step further by providing in-depth explanations of color dominance (yarn dominance) in stranding. Before reading her book, I hadn't heard about the importance of consistently holding the background color of the pattern in one hand (usually the right hand when stranding with two hands) and holding the pattern color in the other hand (usually the left hand when stranding with two hands). After reading her book, I have a great understanding of how important it is to keep the background color strand running over top of the pattern color strand and the pattern color strand coming up from underneath the background color strand if one wants the pattern colors to stand out and wants the motifs to appear consistent. This tip alone (which she learned from speaking with Shetland knitters) makes this book worth its price in gold! Of course, Feitelson explains many other aspects of this craft brilliantly in her book and provides some great patterns. Here are some of the highlights:

• History - great detail gained from her experience interviewing Shetland Isle knitters
• Techniques - steeking, stranding, choosing colors, choosing patterns, and doing the math
• Illustrations - helfpul, clear, and beautiful

The other two books I show above have been helpful to me, too. Stranded Color Knitting by Nanette Blanchard, seems to be out of print now, but I found it to be incredibly helpful since Nanette provides simple, clear instructions and illustrations of many of the techniques I learned in the previous two books I mentioned. I had followed Nanette on her former blog years ago where she provided many tips for Fair Isle knitting. You can still find some of her advice on the group pages for Stranded in Ravelry, but it appears that Nanette is no longer blogging. Lastly, Sheila McGregor's Traditional Fair Isle Knitting was one of the first well-known books written about Fair Isle. The motifs included in this book are very helpful to anyone who wants to create his or her own patterns.

Lastly, I must give a lot of credit to Eunny Jang! Her inspiring work on her former blog, See Eunny Knit, really got me interested in trying Fair Isle way back when. Her amazing instructions and illustrations in her Steeking Chronicles are still available for free online for anyone who wants to view them. I highly recommend them as I do her dvd, Introduction to Fair Isle: The Ivy League Vest. 

I must thank one more designer for her help to me in this process of learning Fair Isle, Beth Brown-Reinsel. For my fortieth birthday a few years back, my husband treated me to a two-day workshop with Beth focused on Fair Isle. She had us all make a small, teddy-bear-sized Fair Isle sweater with steeks to learn the entire process in a hands-on manner. It was the most wonderful birthday gift I have ever received! Unfortunately, I nearly lost my job, because the school at which I was teaching was closing, right after that and had to plunge full force into job-search mode and then become familiar with learning the ropes of a new college. Fortunately, I am very happy where I am now and I am blessed to have landed safely after nearly losing my teaching career. The knitting did take a backseat during those years, though, as it should have, so my inspiration to really master Fair Isle waned for a bit. I am now back on track and hope that all of this book-learnin' pays off soon! It is time to dive in and really make a go of it. We scholarly types can sometimes lose ourselves in reading and studying instead of doing, so now it is time for me to do. I recommend that you try some studying, though, if you are new to all of this since it is a whole lot of fun and time well spent. 

Adventures with Fair Isle, Part II

So, my adventures with Fair Isle have stalled a bit this week. Life got in the way a bit, and the small amount of knitting time I had was devoted to making a couple of caps for a friend of my sister's who is beginning chemo therapy. Of course, these caps are a  much more important knitting priority, and I am always grateful that I can do something with my hands when I hear news such as this!

However, I did want to share a technique that I learned recently from Eunny Jang in her video that accompanies the Ivy League Vest called Introduction to Fair Isle: The Ivy League Vest. She recommended that knitters make several copies of the chart and arrange them into a simulation of the shape of the sweater so that they could then mark the shaping onto the chart in the same way it will look on the sweater. This would then allow the knitter to see exactly where on the chart the decreases and increases for waist shaping, armhole shaping and neck shaping would go.

I took her up on this tip and here is what I made to assist me in knitting the Ivy League Vest:

As you can see I used half of a poster board sheet and pasted several copies of the chart in the order they would need to be used from the bottom of the sweater to the top of the sweater. I used two columns to represent the right edge and the left edge of the front of the garment (I did not represent the entire sweater since I figured I wouldn't need it for the waist shaping, but I might need to make a separate sheet later with a chart to indicate the neck shaping). I also included a few copies  of the symbol keys along the sides of the poster board so I could easily look up and see one when I needed it (however, I already messed up and knitted the wrong shade of green the last time I worked on it, so you know what that means -- rip it!).

Here is a closer photo of the way I indicated where the decreases and increases are in the chart for waist shaping:

The arrows point to the lines I drew to indicate shaping. I always made sure that they went around the boxes that needed to be knitted and if it was a decrease I would draw the line diagonally through the stitch that needed to be decreased. If it was an increase, I would draw the line around the stitch that needed to now be included for an increase. 

This system seems to be working well. I am also able to write detailed notes along the sides and keep a tally at the bottom. Unfortunately, I still make mistakes, but at least when I do, I am finding it much easier to figure them out and fix them. Hopefully, next time I report on this project, I will be sailing along.

Look for at least one more post on this topic next week where I will give information on all of the excellent sources I have used to learn about Fair Isle over the years.

Adventures with Fair Isle

Although I have been knitting for 20 years and have a lot experience under my belt, one area in which I need more practice and have dreams of unmet accomplishments is Fair Isle knitting. As you probably know if you have read my introductory post on this blog, knitting Arans and other types of textured designs has been my primary focus for much of my knitting "career." If you check out my Ravelry profile (suzknittyspinner), you will see that I have knitted several cabled sweaters of varying difficulties (and even more than are pictured on Ravelry since I wasn't always great about taking photos) with Alice Starmore's Inishmore being my most prized achievement. My dream is to knit one of Alice Starmore's Fair Isle designs now that I have one of her Arans under my belt.

However, during all those years of dreaming about and knitting cables, I always had a desire to learn Fair Isle (stranded) knitting, too. Lack of time due to a busy work and family-life schedule kept me from pursuing this dream as intensely as I would have liked to have done. I did make some small steps towards my goal over the years, though. I began by knitting hats, starting with a very easy hat and slowly trying others:

I highly recommend this simple pattern from Homespun Handknit: Caps, Socks, Mittens & Gloves, the Mushroom Cap and Mittens by Jacqueline Fee, as a way to begin to practice your stranding technique. If you have done any reading about Fair Isle knitting, you probably know that there are several ways to hold the yarns when stranding. You can hold them both in one hand, or you can use two hands by knitting English-style in one hand and Continental-style in the other (as Elizabeth Zimmerman and Alice Starmore recommend). I choose to strand using both hands, but because I am an English-style knitter, I had to learn to knit Continental-style with my left hand. Before I even started the hat above, though, I practiced Continental-style knitting on a scarf. Once I felt fairly comfortable with it (after over five years of practicing it, I am still not nearly as comfortable with it as I am English-style -- can't teach an old dog new tricks!), I tried this hat. Since the pattern only requires you to strand the yarn for one stitch at a time, it was fairly easy to get the hang of stranding and to get into a flow with my knitting. The yarn used was also a sport weight yarn, so that made the stranding a bit easier to manage for a first project.

After this hat, I tried another Mushroom Cap in different colors for my niece as well as a stranded hat of my own design (using one of Barabara Walker's motifs from one of her Treasuries) for my other niece:

Making these simple hats and especially choosing the motif for the second hat was a lot of fun, and I began to feel like I might be getting the hang of stranded knitting (these hats weren't technically Fair Isle since they were only using two colors without changes in the colors in the background), so I decided to try something that looks a little more complicated but really isn't, The Fake Isle Hat by Amy King.

It was so much fun to knit that I made another:

After my success with all of these hats, I began to gain confidence and decided to try some mittens at a slightly smaller gauge, so I began Beth Brown-Reinsel's Nordic Mittens, and this is where things began to get a bit more tricky. Working on double-pointed needles is usually a breeze for me since I was fortunate to have a knitting teacher who got me going on socks as my second knitting project (long before socks on two circs or Magic Loop existed). However, dpns while stranding was not my strong suit (and still isn't, which is why I am now using Magic Loop for stranded mittens). Here is what I started and have to this day not finished:

Unfortunately, I put these mittens aside when I began feeling frustration from trying to strand across the gaps between dpns, and my enthusiasm for Fair Isle withered a bit for awhile. I then decided that maybe I needed a class, so for my 40th birthday, instead of having a party, I asked for a weekend-long knitting class on Fair Isle with Beth Brown-Reinsel. It was awesome, and I learned so much. That class renewed my interest in Fair Isle, so I began an Ivy League Vest by Eunny Jang. 

It was a bit slow going at first since the gauge of the Shetland wool is finer than anything I had used previously. However, I began to feel like I was getting a rhythm, and then I made a mistake in the pattern! I intended to find it and fix it, but life got in the way, and before I knew it, this project was put in hibernation along with the Nordic Mittens. They both sat in a closet for over five years. However, this is the year that I plan to finish both of them. For some reason, cable knitting came very easily to me, but I have had to work at Fair Isle. I am now at a point, though, where I really want to be able to say that I met the challenge and have become a proficient Fair Isle knitter. Hopefully, I will be able to do that by the end of this year.

I will be posting later this week with some tips about how I have jump-started both of these projects and the ways that they seem to be coming along more smoothly this time.

Please share your experiences with learning Fair Isle knititng or any questions you might have if you are just starting to learn this technique in the comments below. Click on "no comments" to get to the page where you can add your own comment. I would love to get a discussion going here about this subject. I have a lot of great ideas for further posts that can link you to many of the helpful resources and tips I have picked up along the way even though, as you can see, I have been very slow to put them into practice. I have studied this subject a lot more than I have practiced it over the years. :)

Free Fair Isle Hat Pattern

I decided to write up the pattern for the Simple Fair Isle Hat (Now called the Fair Isle Cross Hat since I posted it to Ravelry and needed to rename it) that I made last week to share with everyone. This my first time writing a knitting pattern, so please feel free to provide me with gentle constructive criticism via email if you see any problems with it. Here is a picture of the hat again in case you forgot or in case you haven't seen my earlier post:

Here is a copy of the pattern: Fair Isle Cross Hat

Please enjoy making your own color choices or even consider substituting pattern motifs for the ones I used. If I were to knit this again, I would definitely substitute a darker green for the one I used since it looks too light next to the cream background. Feel free to leave questions about the pattern in the comment section. Happy knitting!

Experimenting with Design

I recently completed a warm hat for a friend who is going through chemo and needs as many hats as she can get with these extremely cold temperatures we have been having in the Midwest. I had already made her a simple cotton chemo cap for indoors, so this time I thought I would make her something that was beautiful and really warm for outdoor wear. I started searching for patterns, but then I got the idea that I should design one of my own. I have created a few of my own garments over the years (mostly hats and one sweater). I always enjoy the process of searching through stitch guides and choosing colors. This time, though, I wanted to get more practice with Fair Isle knitting since it is something I have tried on and off, but that I don't feel I have mastered yet. Watching Elizabeth Zimmerman's incredible Knitting Workshop DVD (a Christmas present) had inspired me since she was encouraging beginning knitters to design their own two-color hats; I have been knitting for twenty years -- surely I could do this! Here is what I came up with:

I had a lot of fun choosing the motifs and deciding which colors to use for each motif and in each round. Since I wanted to be sure the hat was easily washable for my friend, I used some left-over acrylic that I had from a baby afghan (I would definitely advise using wool, though, if you can). The yarn was worsted weight. The motifs come from Mary Smith and Maggie Liddle's A Shetland Pattern Book (a great little book with easy to use Fair Isle patterns). I choose the central motif of the crosses so that I could knit some "prayers" into her cap. The other motifs were chosen since they had repeats that were divisible into the main pattern repeat and into the total number of stitches on the hat. I am happy with the results overall, but here are a few things I would change if I made another cap using this design:

• I would use a different green. The one that I had in my stash was a bit two light and doesn't pop well enough against the cream yarn. The pattern color really should be dark if the background color is light and vice versa.
• I would use Eunny Jang's technique from her Introduction to Fair Isle video where she recommends knitting all the stitches on the color-change row of corrugated ribbing instead of purling any of them in order to avoid the visible line in the color-change row. Of course, I saw her tip after I had completed the hat. The visible line doesn't bother me too much, though, since it is something I have seen in a lot of corrugated rib, but Eunny's technique is definitely something I will try next time.
• I might substitute different pattern motifs above and/or below the crosses

This project was a lot of fun since I really liked making so many choices and having everything under my control. It meant that I had to knit by the seat of my pants at times and there was some ripping and re-knitting, but it gave me a real sense of why E.Z. always had the mantra of "be the boss of your knitting." It is a great feeling. If anyone is interested in the pattern directions, I would be happy to write them up and post them to the blog. Just let me know by replying to this entry in the comments section below. (Click on the spot where it says "no comments" or if someone else has commented, click on where it says "comments" with a number before it.)

Now that I have completed this hat fairly successfully, I think it is time to pick up some of the other hibernating Fair Isle projects I have started over the years:

Beth Brown-Reinsel's Nordic Mittens

 Eunny Jang's Ivy League Vest

As you all know from the title of my blog, I am an Aran knitter at heart, but I still like experimenting with two-color knitting. Now if I could just finish something bigger than a hat!