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Fair Isle Charts

Reading Fair Isle charts can be easier than reading other types of charts for one big reason.  In Fair Isle knitting there's only one stitch used, the knit stitch for those projects done in the round.  Most Fair Isle knitting is done on circular or four or five double pointed needles thus one is always knitting on the right side.  Charts of this type are read to make the change in colours and not to determine the stitch type which changes if you are on the right or wrong side of the project.  (This will be clearer once I talk about lace chart knitting.)

Below is a photo of the rather used looking Fair Isle chart from Selbu Modern.  (You'll remember it was easy to transport because this project is small, so the pattern was folded and unfolded often as it moved from travel to home to travel and back.)  If you look at the chart very closely you'll see that I have added four red vertical lines.  These lines mark off 5 stitches and as you can see the pattern being knit is easily evident with the background (main colour) in white and the foreground (contrast colour) in gray.  Finally, all one needs to do to use this chart is to replicate the pattern (all 25 stitches of it in this case) the number of times the patterns tells you to do.  Easy.

My very used Selbu Modern Fair Isle chart
If one were more adventuresome, changes in the horizontal stripes can be knit.  This addition would merely need to be marked on the chart to remind the knitter when to change colour.  To see the results check this version of Selbu Modern, where someone has added the horizontal colours changes.

IMG_8975+(2).jpg (1024×683)
See the horizontal colour changes
Perhaps the most perplexing part of the chart can be found in the top third.  You might be asking what about are all those missing spaces/squares?  The hat, of course, is wide at the brim and then decreased to close at the top.  That means fewer and fewer stitches need to be knit to form the design.  This designer decided to just leave the boxes for these now missing stitches off the chart completely.  Others sometimes make a special indication in the missing squares so the knitter knows no stitch needs to be created.

I'll next talk about lace knitting charts, which are more complicated to read and use than this one.  But keep the simplicity of the chart like the one above in mind; you'll be able to better understand why I love Fair Isle knitting so much.
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