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Knitting in a gorgeous color especially with fantastic wool is amazing! But there comes a time when you want to branch out and put many pretty colors into your work. Left handed fair isle to the rescue! Fair isle is a great way to break up the monotony and to give yourself some eye candy.

Fair isle is a way to knit a project in more than one color simultaneously versus knitting with multiple colors in stripes. The pros include: having a warmer garment since the unworked yarn in carried along in the back thus creating a double thickness and being able to knit pictures and patterns. The cons include: dealing with the floats, slower knitting time (at least for me), and weaving in tails.

Let’s start!

Left handed fair isle knitting: holding the yarn

I hold my working yarns just like I do when knitting with only one color. The only difference is that I have one yarn above my knuckle and one below. There are fair isle knitting tools like this that you can find at your LYS: https://www.yarn.com/products/addi-knitting-thimble-finger-ring

I have tried them without success. I have man hands and those finger thimbles cut off the circulation to my finger because the thimbles are so small.

Plain knitting

To knit hold both strands as demonstrated above. When it comes time to knit color one, in my example the red yarn, you just grab the working yarn with your needle and knit one. Knitting color two, in my example the white yarn, just grab that yarn. Remember to be consistent in holding your yarns in your right hand.

Carrying the floats

In the example above I needed to carry the while thread because I was knitting more than 4-5 stitches in red. I do not like to go more than that because the floats may catch or snag when in use. So, to carry the floats take the white yarn and put it over the red yarn. Then, take it under the red thread back to its original spot. Basically, you will be twisting the two threads. The red thread has now locked the white thread in place.

How to avoid tight floats and puckers

Yay! Color one is completed with the unworked yarn twisted in the back. Time to start color two. If you begin knitting with color two without any extra attention your work will begin to pucker and gather.

Look at any of these photos of my hat. In the photos you will see a lot of gathering or puckering of my work. When I started this project I was early in my knitting career and didn’t have a firm understanding of how to knit without the puckers. My work looks wonky because my floats are too tight which causes the garment to pull in on itself. This is not good. It doesn’t look professional and it can affect the overall fit of a garment. I have a pair of fair isle socks that are very tight to put on because I didn’t adequately carry my floats. Needless to say, I don’t wear those socks very often!

The above photo shows my own method of making sure my floats are loose. As I am knitting I stick my fingernail in the way and knit over it which causes more yarn to be used to make that stitch. It’s a bit awkward, but it works for me.

Next, I take the stitches that color two floated behind and I pull them apart to maximum stretch. I can pull up any extra slack if my fingernail method used too much yarn. My garment will now stretch to it’s maximum when worn.

I made a short video for you if you need to see this in action.

Reading color work charts

I LOVE charts because almost without fail I can read them left to right and knit happily away! Same is true for fair isle work. Go ahead and read your work from left to right. Your picture/motif will look exactly the same.