I am going to show you how to work a Fair Isle. Fair Isle is great when you are creating things like little pictures or objects such as flowers or animals. It’s also good when you want to just create a color variation.
In this particular one, I’ve created these little diamonds just to kind of show you how to do this. You can do Fair Isle with as few as two colors or even up to five colors. I will show you how I hold my strands of yarn.
When you’re knitting with more than two colors, sometimes it’s not always together, but you can always kind of figure it out. I like to take my first one—my main color—in my right hand, and then the contrast color in my left hand. I don’t normally Continental knit; I like to throw. But Fair Isle is actually quite fast. You’d be surprised how fast Fair Isle is.
So I’m going to show you. I wrap this around my pinky, and I wrap this one around my index finger. I grab it like this, kind of twist, and then hold. I’m going to show you how to carry the yarn behind using a little technique to kind of grab it.
I like to do it every three stitches. If you stay consistent—even if, let’s say, your fourth stitch is where you’re changing—I will still carry it three stitches over and then knit the next one with the contrast color, whichever color it is. It just keeps the tension consistent.
Okay, so what I’m going to do is create another diamond row. As you can see, it’s just kind of staggered in between. I’m going to knit a couple. I’ve got both of them right here, so I would knit to that middle, which is going to be right here—I think this very next one.
Like I said, it’s around my pinky, but I take this finger and hold it there. Don’t worry about stretching your stitches. You need to knit this a little loose because the tighter you knit with Fair Isle, that hat will be super tight.
Now I’m going to go to the next one, which is over here, and I’m going to knit one, two. Now I’m going to knit the third, but I want to carry this contrast color over before it gets too far behind.
What I do is I kind of keep it up on my finger, and I push through. You see how the needle is under both strands? I wrap my main color around, then I remove the contrast color. As you can see, now that contrast color is right here next to me.
I have a couple more to do, so you will continue. As you can see, I’m going to put this main color right around that contrast color. You can just kind of give it a little pull, but again, not too hard.
Now I’m right here where I can grab that yarn again and get ready for the point of the diamond. So I’m going to go ahead and knit over to that spot again—one, two. Again, now I’m on the third stitch. I go under both just like that, wrap the main color, which is what I’m going to use, and remove the contrast.
Now, I did three; however, I’m still working the main color. Keep going. You’ll see it’s still grabbing it.
Now I want to grab that contrast color. Sorry. What I want to do—again, I usually keep my main color in my right hand because it’s more like the dominant color. However, let’s just say your main color was in the left. I want to show you how to do that.
So I’m going to keep working the main color and show you how to do it the opposite way. If I needed to carry my main color further, I’m going to go ahead and knit a few—one, two. Now I’m on my third, but I want to carry my contrast, which is in my right hand.
What I’m going to do is I don’t go under like I did the first time. I take this and wrap it around as if you’re going to knit it—but don’t. Then wrap the other color that you are actually going to knit, and then remove the contrast color. Now my contrast color is sitting right here with me.
I’ll do it again on this one so you can see how I did that. I’ll go over one. Again, wrap that as if you’re going to knit it, but don’t. Then wrap the other color that you’re actually going to knit, and then remove that contrast color. Again, it’s right there.
And that’s how you would carry it over in Fair Isle. It’s super easy, super fun. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it because it involved Continental knitting. However, I guess since my right hand was still working what it needed to do, my left hand just followed along, and it works out great.
Again, it’s actually pretty fast when you’re knitting with two colors like this, and it’s super fun. It makes beautiful fabric, as you can see. You can do a main color on some things and then do a multicolor yarn in between, and it kind of gives it more depth, like you’ve used multiple colors.
So it’s pretty fun what you can do with Fair Isle. And that is how you knit with Fair Isle.
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