Remember back in the early summer when I said I was going to start writing exclusively about fair-isle work?

Me neither.

I was ALL IN. I read SO many books on colorwork: The Vintage Shetland Project, Alice Starmore’s book, Ann Feitelson’s book, Sheila MacGregor’s book, Marie Wallin pattern books, books on Norwegian knitting, since it’s somewhat similar to the Shetland style, Faroese pattern books… I read everything. I got ideas everywhere. I ordered lots of bits and bobs of Shetland wool online to build up a small stash of colorwork yarn.

Then, after three long months apart, my stash and I were reunited. I almost forgot about fair-isle knitting in a frenzy to get projects finished and new ones onto the needles.

The thing is, I’d cast on a couple of pieces. One was a modified Yell Cardigan by Marie Wallin, the other was Lapwing (also by Marie Wallin). I’m starting to come back to them now, having worked on them really sparsely over the past months, and I’m determined to finish these sweaters.

I’ll go over the details of my Yell cardigan quickly: I’m using the charts for Yell (which can be found in Marie’s book Shetland) but with a traditional cardigan shape rather than the unshaped loose piece it’s written to be. As a recipe for the shape, I’m using Mioness, which is a pattern written for Jamieson’s of Shetland. I quite like it. I’ve used Knitpicks Palette, of which I had quite a sizable stash, for the wide bottom band, and with my preorder of MJ Mucklestone’s new book, I added enough Jamieson and Smith Shetland Heritage yarn to finish it off (in black and silver grey). I hope these yarns can at least give me a similar gauge! I’ve never worked with this particular J&S yarn, but since it’s worsted spun, it should be okay.

Lapwing is a bit of a beast. It’s a free pattern, so if you like it (nobody doesn’t like it, come on, look at this thing), you can download it. But here’s the thing about Marie Wallin patterns: most of them are written to be knit flat, which is a bit contentious. The number of people who know how to knit colorwork is vast. The number of people who know how to purl colorwork is extremely low. Marie always says you can adapt her patterns to be knit in the round, but this is a difficult business. I’m here to give a little bit of guidance, I hope.

First: I’m knitting the sleeves. Here’s a picture. The yarn is Jamieson & Smith 2-ply Jumper Weight in 131 Mix (blue) and 1A (white).

It’s pretty slow.

In the summer, I made a wedding shawl for my dear friend Erin, who got married two weeks ago. It took ages, but I got really used to the idea of knitting on something for a set amount of time each day, and I started to enjoy the meditative quality of all of it, or at least seeing my progress each day! I’ve decided to try and work on this piece for an hour each day. (I say try because…life happens. I try to do a lot of things each day that don’t happen.) It would be nice to be able to finish this by the time the J&S Heritage yarn arrives so that I can continue the Yell cardigan, although I have no idea when preorders go out for the Mucklestone book (also about fair isle. HELP me), so no promises.

For now I can say this: you have to LOVE colorwork to get down with the fair-isle style. I’m working this sweater on US 2 needles to get a gauge of 32 stitches over 4 inches. It’s hard to even see the individual stitches on the sleeves I’ve started on.

After all this, don’t ask. I might never want to knit fair-isle pieces again. On the other hand, I have like fifteen fair-isle sweaters in my head that I want to knit up. We’ll see how I do with my first neck steeks. (I am SO determined to document those! Nobody EVER has resources on how they work!)

Keep knitting, friends.