Fairly Fair Isle

I’ve had a long fascination with Fair Isle knitting. My Mum taught me to knit as a child, but I have only returned to knitting in very recent years. I would still class myself very much as a beginner. With this in mind and the country in lockdown, I decided to embark on a knitting epic! Marie Wallin’s beautiful Sage Throw, no less!

I decided to embark on a knitting epic! Marie Wallin’s beautiful Sage Throw, no less!

All the shops were closed at the time, so I have to make do with yarn from my stash. They weren’t necessarily the colours I would have chosen, but I went with what I had and dived in. I was a woman on a mission.

7462 weeks later, I had a few centimetres of blanket and had given myself a very sore elbow. At that point I decided, even when you can’t leave the house because of a Global pandemic, life is too short for this amount of suffering.

I don’t like to be defeated though and began thinking about ways to achieve a Fair Isle effect in crochet. I made a few test swatches and found that a combination of mixed stitches and tapestry crochet gives a pleasing Fair Isle appearance. Not exactly like Fair Isle, but Fairly Fair Isle!

The biggest problem I found was getting straight edges. The tapestry crochet sections tended to be tighter than the other rows, giving a wavy appearance to the edges. I solved this by simply going up a hook size for any row with colour changes and it worked perfectly.

The entire blanket is made up of just three stitches. Treble crochet (US double crochet), half treble crochet (US half double crochet) and double crochet (US single crochet). Some rows are worked in two colours to give the Fair Isle effect. The colour changes a really easy once you get the hang of it and I found it really satisfying to see the pattern appearing. I’ve included a really detailed tutorial for the colour changes in the pattern.

I used Sirdar Hayfield Bonus Dk. There are some wonderful soft, muted colours in the range, particularly pinks. It’s a slightly thicker dk, which makes it perfect for blankets. It’s also a smooth yarn which gives great definition to the colour changes.

I used:

Sirdar Hayfield Bonus dk (100g balls)

3 x Oatmeal

1 x Cream

2 x Claret

1 x Soft Red

1 x Rustic Pink

1 x Oyster Pink

1 x Moss Green

1 x Apple

1 x Lagoon Blue

I only used small amounts of the Moss Green, Apple and Lagoon Blue so you could check your stash for something similar if you don’t want to buy full balls. Click here for a yarn pack.

If you’re tempted to have a go, you can find the pattern here