Knitting History 101

CeeCee on my shoes

CeeCee has gotten into the habit of curling up in my bed with me every night. Every night she dupes me into thinking we’ll have a wonderful night and everyone involved will walk away rested and refreshed. The first issue comes when we start to talk about how to divide up the bed. I think a 50/50 split is reasonable, considering she weighs 11 pounds and can fit her entire body neatly on top of my size 6 shoes. She disagrees and we always end up in a 60/40 split with her getting the 60; in a twin bed that 10% matters. After that she gerrymanders her piece of the pie by deciding she would be happiest between my legs or pinning me to the wall. Every night I work around this with some very stealthy moves, but last night I was a little too acrobatic and ended up sliding off the bed. Luckily my knitting needles were there to break the fall, but that was about the time CeeCee decided she had just about enough of my antics for one night and pranced off to find more luxe accommodations down the hall.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about today are two historic knitting patterns: Fair Isle and the Aran Sweater (pronounced Aaron as opposed to Iran). I’m knitting both and I’m completely enthralled by their history.

The Fair Isle patterns we know today are from the Shetland Islands which are islands north of Scotland. Fair Isle is the name of the most southern island in the group and home to Shetland sheep (Who would have thought, huh?). Other places that had colorwork patterns as opposed to cable patterns were Norway and Iceland. Fair Isle patterns started as basically neutral patterns, using the natural colors of the wool, since the Shetland sheep come in all sorts of browns and grays. Today we use all sorts of bright colors to create distinctive Fair Isle patterns, but still keep the tradition of only using two colors on a row. All Fair Isle portions of a piece of knitting are double thick because the color of yarn not being used is carried across the back of the work. This is called the floating yarn and it makes Fair Isle extra warm and practically weatherproof which is good when you live so close to Santa’s workshop. Over time Fair Isle patterns have gotten bigger. They started as just a few rows that were repeated, but now they can be practically any size.

Cable work patterns come from the Channel Islands (in the English channel) and the Aran Islands, both of these areas are fishing communities. The fisherman would knit the sweaters themselves during the excessive amount of downtime that fishing brings. Everyone had their own pattern of cables or stitches and the rumor is that a man could be recognized by the pattern he was wearing. It was the old fashioned version of writing your name on the tag. Now people are going back and knitting sweaters that their ancestors had. Fair Isle patterns are full of color and, conversely, Aran patterns are completely devoid of color. Undyed wool is the natural choice when knitting an Aran pattern.

Sources:
Nordic Knits by Martin Storey – this is a really good book with some very beautiful pictures, it has a little bit of everything from floor cushions to vests.
www.aransweatermarket.com -- you can find traditional wool, patterns, more history and sweaters already made.