In this post I'm going to talk about how to make your knitting super colorful. The methos that I am going to teach you is called fair isle. I don't know why it's called that. It makes no sense but whatever.
Fair isle has so many different uses; it's fantastic!! You can use it for making little pictures on a piece or repeating patterns or motifs or anything that involves more than one color in single row.
This might look a bit difficult at first. Looks are not deceiving here. But there is hope! As with every technique on this site with practice, comes skill. To get started you're going to need to different colored yarns and a pair of needles. I think using some cheap acrylic is just fine for practicing.
First cast on 10 sts in one color. This is going to be color 1. Knit a few rows in stockinette stitch to start out. Now we are going to add (wait for it...) a second color!! Trust me it will be fun! So just knit 2 sts and then when you put the RH needle into the next stitch wrap it with color 2 aka red in my chart. Finish the stitch normally and let color 1 hang down behind the work. Do the next stitch with color 2 again. Then on the 5th stitch of the row insert the RH needle, pick up color 1, drop color 2 in the back and wrap the needle with color 1. Just let color 2 hang down. When you wrap the needle with color 1, don't pull it tightly. Instead just pull it enough to make it flat on the back of the work. If you pull it tightly the work will look puckered on the front. Do another stitch in color 1 and then drop color 1 and pick up color 2 again.
When you get to the purl row, pretty much everything is the same except you drop the yarn in FRONT of the work instead of the back. You want to make sure you always have the yarn dropped on the same side so that one side looks clean and neat and the other has a bunch of pieces of yarn across it.
Basically that's it! But obviously you are going to be dealing with a little more than just knitting 2 sts and then changing the color. When you have patterns with more than 2 or 3 sts in the same color, you're going to have to carry the other color in the back of the work. It's pretty easy to do. To make it easier to explain, I'm going to use an example. So say your pattern says you need to knit 2 sts in one color and then 5 sts in another color then 3 more sts in the first color. What you do is knit the two sts in the first color normally, then knit a stitch in the 2nd color. On the 2nd stitch of the 2nd color, *insert the RH needle in the stitch as if you were going to knit it. Then, wrap the needle with color ONE not color two. Wrap the needle with color two then unwrap color one. The two yarns will be twisted around each other. Finish knitting the stitch. Then knit the next stitch normally with color 2 and repeat the process from the * until 4/5 stitches of color 2 have been knit. When knitting the 5th stitch you do not need to wrap the first color and then the second color, just work it normally.
After all 5 sts have been knit, change the color and knit the next 2 sts with color 1.
I hope this has been helpful if you are looking to learn how to knit fair isle! It is an essential skill for any knitter who wishes to advance their talents. Wow that sentence sounded super smart....
The next post will be a fair isle pattern for beginners so be on the lookout!
Happy knitting :)
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