Fair Isle for Textile-Textale

After looking through Alice Starmore books for years and seeing other patterns in the LYS, knitting a Fair Isle sweater became my goal. Each January a class is offered and finally in 2003 the timing was right and I signed up.
The first thing to do was to find a pattern and colors that I liked and then create a swatch. A swatch is knit to check the gauge so the sweater will fit and also to make sure the colors work together to create the XO effect most Fair Isle patterns have.

Perhaps it was a bit of arrogance along with a large bit of naiveté that made me decide to design my own colors and pattern. “Just knit up a swatch and see how it looks. We can make changes from there.” Vonnie said. Having no real idea how to make a FI swatch I jumped in. Knit in the round…ok that means you always start at the right side and pull the yarn around to the beginning of each row. Afraid to waste yarn, time and not really understanding the process, I started out with enough stitches for one repeat. The black for the background and a golden green for my peerie patterns were set but, it took several trips to the shop to find the correct colors to contrast my red and blue violet main colors. Each time I started anew.
When I headed to class with my swatch I noticed the swatches from the other knitters were so impressive! They had cast on 6” of stitches and knit several feet of patterns in different colorways so they could see the evolution of the process and THEN pick the color combination they liked best.

The little scrap that helped me make my decision was tucked into the bottom of my basket so the rest of the class couldn’t see how uninformed, silly and perhaps, even ‘lazy’ I had been. Proudly, from the little swatch grew a beautiful sweater and I was the only person to create my own design and colors. I did use “Winter Sunset Cardigan” by Melanie Elizondo for measurements but the colors and pattern design were cut and pasted from Alice Starmore’s “Charts for Colour Knitting”. After several months of knitting the sweater was complete. There was a real sense of accomplishment with this project, my first Fair Isle. Someone even asked me if it was a Starmore design.
This is an overexposed picture of the finished sweater.

The little scrap (about 2x4.5") will go to Sharon for her new project “Textile Textale”. Read all about this new venture of hers. Then send her a piece of textile that you have created, or something that has a story, and she’ll use it in her new exhibition. Contact Sharon here.