Elizabeth Lovick's A Fair Isle Workbook is available in ebook form. I bought my copy HERE on Etsy for $20. (Also, for $32 you can buy her Knitting Fair Isle CD-rom which includes the Fair Isle Workbook and her pattern for the Upper Leogh jacket.)
I absolutely love this book; it is like going on a tour of the world of Fair Isle knitting with frequent stops to meet some of the famous commercial and hobby knitters of the area. The ebook is 124 pages jam-packed with 350 great color photos. Elizabeth runs the Northern Lace web site where she sells her patterns, ebooks, and hand-dyed yarn from sheep on Orkney Island. She can be found as northernlace on Ravelry and she also hosts spinning, dying and knitting workshops from her home and studio on the island of South Ronaldsy . Elizabeth is certainly working overtime to teach us about the fiber traditions of her part of the world.
Although the term Fair Isle is used now to mean pretty much anything and everything (I once saw a print ad that used the term for a one-color per row striped sweater), traditional Fair Isle is a specific type of stranded color knitting. Usually Shetland wool yarn is used although Elizabeth tells us that the earliest known sample of Fair Isle knitting was actually done in silk. Silk!!!! Now I won't rest until I try using silk for colorwork. In her list of web and print references, she reviews most of the known resources and states her For and Against opinions of most books on the subject. I found a couple of things she had to say in her reviews of the books very interesting indeed. Also interesting is that she maintains steeks were NOT used by any of the Shetland knitters she interviewed and that the knitters stated that their mothers and grandmothers never used them either. So steeks are used now in Fair Isle sweaters but she doesn't think they are traditional.
The book includes a wealth of technique information, including a great section on fixing mistakes, a section on choosing colors, and probably the best history of Fair Isle knitting I've ever read (and I own most of the Fair Isle books in her bibliography). She distinguishes between "Shetland Fair Isle" (larger patterns and influences from Norwegian star designs) and "Fair Isle Fair Isle"(smaller patterns usually of the XOXO variety) and "Orkney Fair Isle" (a
combo of both). The section on commercial Fair Isle knitting today shows several knitters with the items they knit and sell. The book includes a 144 st Master Class that can be used for various hand-knit items, a pattern for small Fair Isle bags knit in fingering weight yarn, and a pattern for a Fair Isle Ha'af Cap and Beanie.
Throughout the book she repeats the mantra, "Do what you are comfortable with. Take notice of what others do only when it suits you. There are no knitting police." If you are at all interested in real Fair Isle and the traditions, check out this book. And if you are lucky enough to be planning a fiber trip to the area, definitely purchase it.
