Fabulous Fair Isle Catherine Johnson

Girl in a Fair Isle Jumper by Stanley Curbister, City of Edinburgh collection

I am opening my blog with this stunning portrait painted at the height of the Fair Isle craze in 1923. I love her outfit. I hadn't intended to open with this painting, this was a moan about my lack of Christmas preparedness and began, initially like this;

I have not started my Christmas shopping. I have bought three books - for me - and begun two knitting projects for close family. Only ten days to finish one double moss stitch jacket and a pair of fair isle mittens.... (excuse me for sounding like Ruby Ferguson's Jill).

But what really got me fired up was this;  Keira Knightley in The Imitation Game. I haven't seen it yet, but check that cardigan!

Keira in The Imitation Game

Anyone who knows me is aware of my knitting fixation. I have practically bought my ticket just on the stills for that film. Authentic pattern and colour! Beautiful.

I have been a fan of Fair Isle and other 20th century knitting patterns since college. I used to knit up for a designer called Patricia Roberts and sold Fair Isle patterned tams at Portobello Market.  

I love war time set telly almost exclusively for the knitwear as the shows themselves are often disappointing. For example,  The Bletchley Circle, which should have been marvellous if judged solely on the quality of the cardigans, let itself down badly.

Anna Maxwell Martin in The Bletchley Circle

Fair Isle was popularised by Prince Edward, when he was Prince of Wales. He was given a jumper by the world famous Lerwick wool merchants, Jamesons in 1921. He was soon photographed in them on and off the golf course and as one of the most fashionable people of his generation started a massive trend. This trend for handcrafts - now only affordable by the elite - took off at the same time as mass produced ready to wear clothing and the end of a horrific war seems to signify a yearning for a kind of British nostalgia that still exists, Laura Ashley, cycling spinsters, cricket for tea....

Prince Edward Prince of Wales in 1921

Traditional Fair Isle patterning is actually much easier to do than it looks.  Although colourful and heavily patterned, most never have any more than two colours in a row and can be knitted on two needles rather than the usual four if desired. The patterns are generally variations on an X O theme. Crosses and circles, large and small. Each island family had it's own recognisable patterns, and each knitter made sure to include at least one imperfection. This was vital to stop the Devil admiring the knitting and snatching the wearer, and his precious jumper, down to hell. It is said the patterns were handed down from the Spanish sailors, part of the Armada in 1588, whose ship ran aground on the island, but there's so much attributed to those Spanish sailors they must have been terribly busy.

Jeremy Irons in the BBC production of Brideshead Revisited

Fair Isle sweaters were originally designed as fisherman's jumpers. Knitted seamlessly, like a gansey, from bottom to top and arms from the shoulder down with double thickness welts, the pattern rendered a double thickness fabric, twice as warm as that of a 5 ply gansey.  

Of course the sweaters were first knitted in natural undyed wool, but the as soon as mass dyed wool became available they went psychedelic. I do think that during those long dark winters a beautiful brightly patterned jumper must have been a hugely welcome injection of colour.

From the Shetland Museum 1920s Fair Isle

Anyway if anyone out there does need a knitting consultant, I'm your woman. Happy Christmas.

Here's some I made earlier

Catheirne Johnson's last novel was SAWBONES, winner of the 2014 Young Quills award for historical fiction. In 2015 her story The Liar's Girl (recently included as one of the most boring stories ever) is part of LOVE HURTS an anthology of love stories out in February.