pattern description

This is a knitting pattern for a pair of fair isle shorts or trousers worked seamlessly from the top down, beginning at the hip and finishing at the leg hems. The colourwork is carried throughout in a two-colour stranded technique, with corrugated rib at the hip and leg hems to frame the design. Additionally, there is a tube of double knitting at the hips that acts to support the ribbing, and can also hold elastic if desired. The shorts are shaped with lifted increases at the front and back and a triangle of short-row shaping at the butt, giving extra coverage. The legs are worked one at a time in the round, with stitches for the second leg held on waste yarn while the first is completed.

This is not a beginner pattern! This pattern is ideal for a knitter with experience in stranded colourwork, short rows, and working in the round. The short row shaping may be challenging for some as it occurs at the same time as increases and working stranded colourwork flat - this probably isn’t the best project to choose if you have never done short rows before.

There are two options for your charts: traditional fair isle look, or a grid pattern based off of a John Landes weaving.

yarn choices

This is a great scrap yarn project. To work the fair isle pattern, we will need 3 different shades of MC yarn and 3 different shades of CC yarn. I prefer to have 3 dark yarns as MC, and 1 light yarn and 2 neon/high saturation yarns as CC.

You may slightly vary yarn weights and textures. I find a range of Fingering, Sport, DK and Light worsted work well, optionally adding a thread of lace weight mohair to balance the weight.

sizing

There are currently 3 sizes to fit the following measurements and up to 10% larger:

waist: 62 83 103 cm; 24 33 41 in

To create more sizes, adjust your gauge by increasing or decreasing your needle size. For example, a 69cm / 27in waist fit can be achieved by sizing up needles to 4.5mm / US 7 and knitting Size 1.

There is also the option to create half sizes allowing you to increase the listed size by 12cm / 4.7in, or decrease by 9cm / 3.5in, and information about how to slightly adjust your needle size and yarn to get your ideal fit.

In the future, I would love to create more fully charted sizes, but it is challenging due to the complex nature of the charts. If you are interested in testing this pattern for larger (or smaller) sizes, please reach out with your waist, hip, and upper thigh measurements! Thank you :)