Life is full of little connecting pathways that lead us backwards and forwards in our endeavours. My mind certainly seems to work like this and the internet does too, allowing us to try new things and be inspired by wonderful images. This project is a bit off the well trodden path for me but I find that most people who have a love of sewing in all it’s forms, often also knit too or at least have an interest in all things hand crafted. Let me begin by saying that I am not really a knitter - I sort of tinker with it from time to time and am painfully slow too, although I never fail to be seduced by the idea of hand knitted things and often find myself faced to faced with gorgoeous photographs on instagram or in my much treasured issues of ‘By Hand Serial’ and ‘Making’. I even went to the Edinburgh Yarn Fest a couple of years ago with a good friend who loves knitting, and in autumn last year, she sent me a lovely gift of the Shetland Wool week booklet. I poured over the images of this gorgeous Scottish island and the fair isle knits were so delicious, that I mulled over the idea of giving it a go. I also bought a copy of Marie Wallin’s ‘Wildwood’, another beautifully photographed collection of hand knits with tartan swirling around the intricate patterns of fairisle knits ….I was off in Outlander world again! I can’t even explain this whole Scottish thing that I seem to have going on here… but it so much fun to delve into the style of these ancient lands and crafts. I spent evenings in the run up to Christmas with a glass of wine in hand, plotting and planning some projects for the new year. I was thrilled when ‘under the Christmas tree’ was the final piece of inspiration to get me started. This amazing box of yarn from the border mill shop (link at the bottom of the post) which provided me with the palette of colours to get started.

Each of the tiny 10g balls is named (rather wonderfully) after some inspirational place in the northern part of Scotland and inside the box was not only a colour chart, but beautiful map with all of these listed. One thing I absolutely love about fair isle is the colour work element. The interplay of shades woven in intricate patterns are so beautiful and this box enabled me to mix and match the colours before I even began knitting.

I decided for my first project to pick something that looked manageable and selected Marie Wallin’s ‘Sycamore arm warmers’. I liked that it was only 60 stitches on the needle and as it really is a long long time since I did anything like this, seemed liked a sensible choice. I picked my two favourite colours to begin with and they are very similar to the ones in the pattern picture, ivory and burgundy. I mainly selected these because I knew they complimented each other well and they would match my vintage style handbag.

For me, this kind of project takes phenomenal concentration and I found that I needed total quiet…no radio or audio book in the background, just focus, focus and more focus. I did get in a bit of a tangle to begin with, especially on a purl row, and I did make some mistakes too. These were many because the charts are read the opposite way to what you might think. A ‘right side’ (RS) row is read from right to left. I only actually knew this because I had watched Marie Wallin’s video on youtube which was hugely informative and I would recommend if you plan to try this (I will put a link at the end of the post). Because I am generally not all that good with the right and left thing anyway, I did get in a bit of a muddle ended up having to unpick some stitches and this is really a pain. After that, I marked my chart clearly and started almost saying the sequence of stitches out loud as I went along the row. Another tip in the video is to enlarge the chart and this was very helpful because you can write all over it and I also found that a metallic board and magnifying mirror was absolutely essential. Honestly I have had these for many many years ago when I used to do quite a bit of cross stitch, but I can really recommend finding something like this if you can.

As my knitting progressed and the patterns started to emerge, I was so delighted and felt a real sense of accomplishment. I did find myself considering all things fairisle and for some reason a distant memory wound its way to the forefront of my mind of an old tv series that was probably the beginnings of my love for vintage style and period costume. ‘Love for Lydia’ based on an H E Bates novel was, I discovered screened in 1977 - I was only just a teenager at this point and at 14, no doubt very impressionable, but I found myself recalling images of skating on a pond and fur collared coats with fair isle cardigans and long tweed skirts. I started looking on the internet and found an old episode on youtube - I clicked the button and the moment the music started, everything about it flooded into my mind from some deep crevice where it had been stored for years. The first episode opened with the hero of the piece, a budding writer and local journalist at his typewriter… it was the actor Christopher Blake and I remembered that I had a terrible crush on him (he was also Gilbert Blythe in a BBC production of Anne of Green Gables) and even had a tiny picture cut out of a magazine pasted in my school jotter. It’s fun to remember all these things, but actually I thought I had never read this book and went in search of a copy to accompany my journey into fairisle. I found a first edition (1952) hard back copy on an internet sight for just a few pounds and when it arrived, I felt as if I had rescued a little piece of long forgotten treasure from some cluttered warehouse in cyberspace. It is a lovely little book and has that musty aroma about it of a long unopened story. I began to read. What a charming and beautifully written book and a great winter read full of snowy scenes and marvellous descriptions of the english landscape. The characters are beautifully portrayed and the whole ‘englishness’ of the book is just enchanting. So my arm warmers are becoming Lydia’s and as I finished up the first one, despite some of the tension being a little uneven, it really wasn’t bad at all.

There is something magical about working on this kind of project too - it makes you want to light candles, bake cookies and enjoy the simple cosiness of home. I was eager to start on the next one and found that the second one knitted up more quickly. I suppose this is because my confidence wass rising with every successful band of pattern and I got much better at twisting the yarns along the back of the work so the overall appearance looks not bad at all. Don’t get me wrong - I was still getting the yarns really twisted on a wrong side row, but with such a small piece, I think this doesn’t really matter as it is simple enough to unravel at the end of each row.

Sewing all the ends in was a real chore, but not an unpleasant one really as it gave me a chance to reinforce the sides in preparation for stitching up. I took the time to find out how to block the two pieces and this is obviously really worth it. The wool had seemed a like it might be a little scratchy but once it was soaked with water the yarn sort of melted into a much softer fabric that was malluable. I had also been concerned about the width of the arm warmers but it is at this stage that everything works out. You can stretch the knitted fabric gently to the measurements given and pin it to a padded board while it is wet. As it dries, the stitches seem to line up in neater straight lines and it all looks just as it is supposed to.

I actually am prodigiously proud of these! They are going to be so useful and lovely to wear, especially as I am a fan of 3/4 sleeves, they will just add that touch of warmness on chilly spring days. I do a lot of sewing, but knitting feels much more of an achievement for me. I am completely in love with fair isle now and not sure how on earth to tackle a larger project because there are just so many beautiful designs out there. Meanwhile, my girl and my sister might both be placing orders…. so we shall see.

Making fairisle arm warmers and Lydia.jpg

I finished ‘Love for Lydia’ too and was so happy to rediscover this beautiful book that I so enjoyed to read. From the very first page it enchanted me with it’s gentle descriptive narrative of an english winter. It could have been here …. “Across the valley the floods of January, frozen to wide lakes of ice, were cut into enormous rectangular patterns by black hedgerows that lay like a wreckage of logs washed down on the the broken river. A hard dark wind blew straight across the ice form the north-east…… It was so cold that solid ice seemed to be whipped up from valley on the wind, to explode into whirlwinds of harsh and bitter dust that pranced about in stinging clouds. Ice formed everywhere in dry black pools, polished in sheltered places, ruckled with dark waves at street corners or on sloping gutters where wind had flurried the last falls of rain. Frost has begun in the third week of January, and from that date until the beginning of April it did not leave us for a day. All the time the same dark wind came with it, blowing bitterly and savagely over long flat meadows of frozen floods.”

The book is a coming of age story and the central figure, Lydia Aspen is flawed and not entirely likeable. As the story revolves around her, our narrator, Richardson (we never get to know his christian name) is a long suffering and sometimes floundering admirer, along with a coterie of other local characters. Being a young adult was never easy and the ‘mental health issues’ talked about constantly now are not new even if they are exacerbated by new things. Mixed in the background, H E Bates paints a clear and intriguing portrait of the english class system and it is interesting that the book is written in 1952 but set in the 1920’s. There is a wonderful feeling of classlessness about it in fact. The decaying and defunct aristocratic Aspen family are certainly nothing to aspire to and the sense that the young people could move onwards and upwards with education and determination into a freer and more equal society underlines the story. For sure, I didn’t get all that at the age of 14, but I did get a love for vintage style that has stayed with me all these years. Perhaps you know the author for ‘The darling buds of May’ which was a hugely popular tv series but this it seems to be that he might have become a little forgotten these days. This book is just wonderful and I am glad to have rescued it and happy to put it up on my bookshelves to remind me always of being 14 and my fair isle arm warmers.

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