The Fair Isle knitter will revel in this lovely design, with its gay riot of colouring. The original design was in black, with the neat narrow bands of patterning in mustard-yellow, mauve, pink, pale green, burnt orange, blue and red, but it would look equally delightful with any dark background colour. The design is worked with the aid of charts and supplementary directions.

Like many patterns which featured in needlework magazines at the time, the pattern was also available as a separate leaflet. This one was published in Needlewoman and Needlecraft issue No. 10, which can be dated as April 1942, and also by Bestway as a separate leaflet for ‘A Charming Fair Isle’, the instructions given being much more comprehensive in the latter than in the magazine.

The advantage of the magazine version is the glorious colour illustration, not included in the leaflet. The instructions below have taken advantage of the best of both patterns, and include modern adaptations to clarify the original instructions further.

This pattern works equally well knitted in two strong contrasts, echoing the image of the Bestway leaflet, as well as the glorious colour version. It has its own dramatic effect, as seen in the alternative version which was knitted in dark navy and cream.

In the original pattern, each body half is knitted on 130 stitches with no shaping. Although this achieves a finished size of 89 cm (35 inches) across the bust at the underarm measurement if knitted on 3.75 mm needles (Fair Isle will tend to be a tighter tension than stocking stitch), it is a larger number of stitches than usual for starting the ribbing for that size, so different numbers of cast-on stitches have been given below as an alternative.

Materials

• 4 x 50 g (1.75 oz) balls of MC, original pattern suggests black
• 150 g (5 oz) in total of various colours or 3 x 50 g (1.75 oz) of one contrast. Colours suggested and approximate quantities needed: 40 g (1.5 oz) mustard yellow, 40 g (1.5 oz) blue, 25 g (0.9 oz) green, 25 g (0.9 oz) pink, 25 g (0.9 oz) orange, 25 g (0.9 oz) red, 20 g (0.9 oz) mauve
• 1 pair 2.75 mm/12 needles
• 1 pair 3.25 mm/10 needles
• 1 pair 3.75 mm/9 needles
• For shoulder openings: 3 small buttons (for one shoulder opening) or 6 for both shoulders (as in the original pattern)