Tag Archives: Fulling

Fun with Fair Isle Color Knitting

Hand knit coasters
Knit and fulled Coasters

I have a great collection of mitten and sock pattern books that I love to page through and look at the designs. Sometimes I crave a small knitting project in color work but I don’t want to spend the time it takes to knit a pair of mittens or socks. . . so I came up with a great idea.

Fulled coasters in Fair Isle knitting!!

hand knit fair isle coaster
Knit and Fulled Coaster #7

Thinking that the fulling would prevent the dreaded stockinette roll I was sadly mistaken. Taking a different approach, I knit the second one starting with 3 stitches, increasing each side to approx 30 stitches wide, then decreasing each side down to three stitches. I ended up with a square coaster that didn’t roll. For some reason working the color pattern on the diagonal resulted in flat coasters! COOL!

Hand knit fair isle coaster

I had odd amounts of 100% wool yarn from Gale Woods Farm that worked out great; the worsted weight worked up really fast, the wool fulled easily and I could use up my odd amounts. I knit these on size 9 needles and fulled them in the washing machine.

It was a little tricky changing the orientation of the designs. If the design was set in a diamond already it was easy to knit the Fair Isle and work the increases and decreases without worry. But a few of these I had to rechart to keep my place while knitting and shaping.

It was also a fun way to see how the pattern looks when different colors became the foreground or background.

Fair Isle knit and fulled coaster

Fair Isle knit and fulled coaster
These coasters are the same design but the colors are reversed.

Fair Isle knit and fulled coaster

I’m going to remember this. Next time I knit a big project using color work, I will first knit a few coasters while experimenting with the color.

Fair Isle knit and fulled