Patterns...Fair Isle

-Fair Isle is a traditional knitting technique used to create patterns with multiple colours.

-It is named after Fair Isle, a tiny island in the north of Scotland, that forms part of the Shetland islands.

-Traditional Fair Isle patterns have a limited palette of five or so colours, use only two colours per row, are worked in the round, and limit the length of a run of any particular colour.

-Some people use the term "Fair Isle" to refer to any colourwork knitting where stitches are knit alternately in various colors, with the unused colours stranded across the back of the work. Others use the term "stranded colourwork" for the generic technique, and reserve the term "Fair Isle" for the characteristic patterns of the Shetland Islands.

-Basic two-colour Fair Isle requires no new techniques beyond the basic knit stitch.

-The simplest Fair Isle pattern is as follows: using circular or double pointed needles, cast on any number of stitches. Then, just keep knitting round and round, always alternating colours every stitch. If you started with an even number of stitches, you will end up with a vertically striped tube of fabric, and if you started with an odd number of stitches, it will be a diagonal grid that appears to mix the two colours.

-Traditional Fair Isle patterns normally had no more than two or three consecutive stitches of any given colour, because they were stranded, and too many consecutive stitches of one colour means a very long strand of the other, quite easy to catch with a finger or button.

-Beginning in the 1990s, the term "Fair Isle" has been applied very generally and loosely to any stranded color knitting which has no relation to the knitting of Fair Isle or any of the other Shetland Islands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Isle_%28technique%29