Getting there...

The Fair Isle jewellery collection is gradually beginning to take shape. I've been busily hand knitting Fair Isle pieces and felting them in the washing machine, cutting them into the brooch shapes and embellishing with a little scattering of sparkly Swarovski Crystals that highlight the colours of the beautiful British wool. I'm planning to make some non felted Fair Isle brooches too, I'll share those as soon as they're done.

However, although I love the Wendy Ramsdale DK yarn I've been using, it's beautiful to knit with and it felts beautifully (as well as being 100% British made) I'm feeling like the colour palette may be a little limited. I've been looking at some ranges in Shetland wool that come in a huge range of colours, so I'm going to order some of those to try.

This is one of the larger pieces I knitted and then felted

I'd recommend The Very Easy Guide To Fair Isle Knitting if you'd like to learn too. It's the best book for beginners that I've seen as it takes you through the stages of learning to Fair Isle in manageable lessons, from the very basics of regular knitting, to holding and stranding the yarns in Fair Isle patterns and then on to lots of stitch patterns and projects to apply them to. I didn't find it very easy at first, but I think it's a case of perseverance!

Do you have any Fair Isle tips you'd like to share?

Fair Isle Felting Experiments!

I'm currently teaching myself Fair Isle knitting using Wendy Ramsdale British wool with an aim of creating a Fair Isle jewellery collection for the Winter. I'm trying out lots of different techniques at the moment to find out how the yarn behaves and here are some felting experiments I've been trying out, combing Fair Isle with other processes and then felting the samples in the washing machine. Here are some before and after photos!

For this piece I hand knitted a Fair Isle sample and then felted it in the washing machine at 60 degrees to see how the patterns came out when felted. I had tried washing it at 40 degrees but it only partly felted. It's made a lovely thick felt which would be great for making brooches and I'm pleased that you can still see the patterns- further experimentation required!

For this sample I knitted a plain piece in Ramsdale yarn and embroidered Fair Isle influenced patterns onto it using the same wool. Again I felted the piece in the washing machine at 60 degrees. I like the effect both before and after felting, especially as you can still see some of the embroidered detail, although I'd like the felt to be a little less fuzzy looking

I then knitted a piece combing Fair Isle and cable patterns, again putting it into the washing machine to felt at 60 degrees. Unfortunately the detail of the cables has been lost through the felting process, but it's all part of experimenting

 Take a look at more Fair Isle patterns I've knitted with Ramsdale here and read about how I tried Fair Isle in fabric! Now I'm off to experiment with combining cable, Fair Isle and embroidery in other ways, so I'll keep you posted!

Learning Fair Isle with a beautiful British wool!

Earlier in the year I began experimenting with learning Fair Isle Knitting and this weekend, with my mind on a Winter jewellery collection, I have taken up my needles again to make some more Fair Isle samples! I'm not sure where this collection is going to take me yet, so I'm just trying to master the basics and then I hope to mix it up a little!

I have discovered a beautiful new yarn by Wendy that I have used to create these pieces.  Ramsdale is a pure wool, Double Knit yarn, born, bred and made in Yorkshire and it's lovely to work with - I'm very excited to be using a British product and I'm looking forward to experimenting with it more later in the week. I'm gradually buying all of the colours in the range so it's going to get colourful! I also think it'll make great felt so I'm planning on felting some pieces later in the week and also incorporating some cables into the Fair Isle. I'll post some updates later in the week!

I think I'm getting the hang of stranding the yarn on the back between colours-  it's getting neater!