There is nothing quite like knitting a fairisle hat. For a quick knit that leaves you feeling accomplished, there is nothing as satisfying.
I noticed this for the first time when I knit the Peerie Flooers hat last year, a multi-colored adventure into stranded knitting. I really wanted the finished hat and resigned myself to taking ages to knit it, but it was impossible to resist watching the colors weave in and out of each other and it knit up surprisingly quickly. In bad romance novel language, I was seduced by fairisle.
Vitsippa is turning out to have the same sort of allure. Although I put it down for a couple of weeks after knitting the ribbing to focus on Oak Park, in just the weekend, I'm half way through the body.
A few quick links if you are new to fairisle (or stranded) knitting:
It's worth watching the Philosopher's Stone video and feeling awkward for a bit to teach yourself to knit fairisle with two hands. I'm a confirmed English knitter and almost never knit Continental, but I love how it keeps my yarn from tangling to be able to knit fairisle with both hands And, it's surprisingly easy after about an hour of (frustrating, you will likely use language unsuitable for the ears of small children) practice. Trust me on this one.
How to catch your floats neatly (scroll down to the section on wrapping the yarn while you knit). Yarn dominance – it's important to understand this for consistent patterning.
Stranded knitting is almost always written in chart form. No matter what you think, I promise it is not scary. You can master a fairisle chart with a few markers and some color coding. Or, better yet, use Knit Companion. The free one hour overview class revolutionized my knitting life. No affiliation, but I use it for all of my knitting and find I make far fewer mistakes. You owe it to yourself!
