Sheila McgregorTraditional Fair Isle Knitting

Fantastic book of Fair Isle Patterns, if you are interested in a pattern book of traditional Fair Isle designs this is the book for you! However this book is mostly a pattern book than a how-to instruction guide. Like her book on Nordic designs the author assumes the knitting is somewhat familiar with the technique, that said if a beginner starts out with the simpler designs that have no more than five to seven stitches between the rows they should be fine.Also the designs in either book can be used as either traditional Fair Isle where the background colors change in the middle of the design sequence or in the traditional Nordic version where one background color is used throughout a design pattern.While they are technically two different styles of knitting, both Scotland and the Nordic countries have strong historical connections and many basic designs are found in both places.

Recommended by a friend and i wasn’t disappointed. It’s great to get insight into the historical connection between Eastern European colourwork and Fair Isle. I have a friend who is a knitwear designer with roots and inspiration in Estonian traditional colourwork. It was nice to read about that connection and see the different patterns to which i recognise current designers have used. This book gives you the opportunity to venture into designing your own colourwork from simple to absolutely pushing your boundaries! I’m excited to experiment on my own ideas! Fantastic book!

This is the bible for starting your journey into fair isle. Everything that has been said about this book is true. There is a fantastic history of the craft and a magestic amount of charts to start your love off.

I'm disappointed with this book. I wanted a book that would instruct me on steeks yet all the advice is just that - advice. The author's very brief few paragraphs on steeks only vaguely mentions some techniques she's heard of. There's lots of pages of patterns (not knitting patterns, Fair-Isle patterns) which I'll make use of (there's a much better book for that that's in colour but having said that there are designs in here I've not seen so... ) but if you're looking for any useful info about how to construct a Fair-Isle jumper then this isn't the book you need.

If you want something covering the history and origins of Fair Isle and Shetland knitting then this book is for you. It has several chart of different traditional styles but does NOT have any actual patterns for making actual garments . Not a book for a beginner .