fair isle knitting (to try)

This article I just saw via Tumblr about an English photographer who impulsively traveled to Fair Isle in the 70s and walked around knocking on everyone's doors to ask them if they had any Fair Isle sweaters is... incredibly relatable. I mean, not in the sense that I can imagine DOING that (the door-knocking), but definitely in the sense that I sympathize with the impulse.

I love Fair Isle sweaters and have been meaning to learn to make them for years. When I say 'learn to make them', you can achieve Fair Isle patterns - stranded colorwork with a bunch of colors, which is also sometimes referred to as mosaic colorwork (Fair Isle being, obviously, regional and stylistic) - as long as you know how to knit. In fact, if you have circular needles you don't even have to know how to purl. The problem is that the more colors of yarn you hold at once, the more work it is to keep them from getting tangled. There are various devices and methods for people who have a lot of practice with stranded colorwork, but none of them work without practice. You also get faster at it as you go, and switching colors frequently will slow you down at first quite a bit if you're used to knitting with a single color.

The other (basic) issue is that maintaining even tension (on the yarn as you go, that is) in stranded colorwork, because of the strands carried in the back, is a bit different - the first experimental scraps I tried had weird bits where the colors pulled at the fabric differently, because of one of them being held more taut than the other and the way they twist together when you switch colors. The last piece of stranded colorwork I did was this Deep Woods Toque by Kiyomi Burgin (pattern sale page on Ravelry), back in 11.2018. I actually ordered the iconic Fair Isle yarn, Jamieson's of Shetland Spindrift, from Great British Yarns (a highly recommended yarn shop!) for the purpose... and I ended up having to rip up the whole first attempt and start over from scratch because I neglected to realize that stranded colorwork is much less stretchy than normal knitting. You see, the floats (that is, the strands carried on the back of the fabric) are more or less straight lines between the two places where the color appears on the surface of the fabric, while the other color that you're looking at on the front bends through all the loops of the knitting; those straight lines barely stretch at all. (The floats also create air pockets on the back of the fabric that trap warmth in the fibers of the yarns, making stranded colorwork swatches better at holding bodyheat than the same weight or thickness in a single layer of knitting.) The hat is nice but slightly too big for my head so I have never decided what to do with it: I haven't found an appropriate acquaintance to give it to.

I also learned that Jamieson's of Shetland is just slightly too itchy for me to wear on my head, so any future Fair Isle headwear will be made with something softer (though probably not MadTosh like the pattern calls for; that seems a little unnecessary). Also the traditional construction method for most stranded colorwork of this type - not just Fair Isle, but also nordic sweaters - is steeking, which I have never done before.

It's always easier to make the next convenient thing in my queue than to start acquiring a new skill that means choosing a smaller first project before working up to sweaters and then selecting colors and buying a bunch more yarn for it...

Here's my Rav bookmark bundle of Fair Isle knitting to try.