Travel with me
Monday, February 13, 2012 at 10:59AMTo a tiny remote island inhabited with crofters, sheep and women who knit intricate patterns into their woolens.
Copyright Roy Longmuir Dreamstime.comThe actual Fair Isle is part of the Shetland Islands and boasts to be the most remote inhabited island. The maxim of 'more sheep than people' holds truth here. Most live on the southern half of the island because the northern portion is covered by rocky moorland and the western side drops off into cliffs 200 metres high (that's 660 feet for us Americans). A permanent bird observatory was founded in 1948 as the island serves an important point of migration for rarely seen species. While not the most populous of islands it does have a rather interesting knitting technique named after it.
Characterized by the the use of multiple colors to create designs, the traditional fair isle refers to certain patterns and motifs that limit the length of a color run and rarely use more than two colors at time. It can refer to any type of color work where the yarn is stranded behind across the entirety of the piece however. Fair Isle jumpers gained popularity when worn by the Prince of Wales in the 1920s and became the stuff of llaughter when worn by the Monty Python troupe for their Gumby characters.
No matter how silly you look in wellies with a napkin on your head, one can't deny the beauty of a Fair Isle sweater, or the whimsy of a color work mitten. And that is why in this short month of February we are celebrating all things fair isle.
Love Bytes pattern by Grace Schnebly
I think I need to go look at plane fares to Scotland now.
Reader Comments (2)
This inspired me to look up where exactly little Fair Isle sits -- way up near the Orkneys, poor remote thing! Great post.
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