Introduction to Fair Isle: The Ivy League Vest

Learn to master multicolored Fair Isle knitwear in this video workshop with Eunny Jang, editor of Interweave Knits magazine and co-host of Knitting Daily TV on public television.

Jang uses her popular \"Ivy League Vest\" pattern--included as a free pattern download with purchase of this video--and walks knitters through it's construction while teaching the basic of this popular color-stranded knitting technique.

Each Fair Isle lesson is explained step-by-step with Jang offering her inside tips and secrets for swatching for Fair Isle, holding two yarns comfortably, how to maintain tension, how to introduce new colors into the pattern, easy fixes for common mistakes, casting on for a steek, how to shape colorwork, how to cut steeks, and successful finishing techniques.

Included in this video is Jang's overview of the history of colorwork in Fair Isle and colorwork styles from other regions, plus a look at yarns and tools needed to successfully complete your Fair Isle projects. Introduction to Fair Isle: The Ivy League Vest anticipates the questions you may have about this traditional technique and makes the process of learning Fair Isle easy and fun.

The DVD is divided into seven sections, including:

• Introduction to Fair Isle knitting, which touches on the history of the style and regional variations
• Getting started: explains that Fair Isle is worked with two colors per round and shows how to cast on with two colors
• Advanced principles: more on corrugated ribbing, different ways to hold the yarns, color planning and dealing with yarn joins
• Knitting in the round, including how to work shaping in a pattern area and what a steek is and why it's used
• The body in detail: how to read a chart, keeping up with pattern increases and decreases, more on steeks and using duplicate stitch to fix mistakes in Fair Isle patterning
• Cutting the steek, why it works and how to pick up stitches to finish the neck and arm holes

Preview

About the Author

Eunny Jang is a knitwear designer, host of Knitting Daily TV, and editor of Interweave Knits magazine as well as Interweave Knits Weekend and Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts special issues. She is passionately interested in knitting technique, history, and design. Eunny lives and works in Colorado.