Thinking about trying Fair Isle, but you aren’t ready for a large project? Try a simple four-stitch Fair Isle pattern and knit up these beautiful wrist warmers or a wrist band (two alternative pattern charts are available). The top and bottom edges have corrugated ribbing to keep the warmers snug and can be shortened or lengthened for a different effect. This pattern assumes you have basic Fair Isle experience or a Fair Isle book that has images of the technique as well as experience knitting in the round (either with the magic loop method or on dpns). There are several tutorials on line as well to help you out.

Alternative yarn options: The models use Avillion Farm yarn. Avillion Farm is currently updating their website, so their yarn may not show up (please email the owner if you’d like the yarn used in this pattern). However, this pattern works well with other fingering weight yarns and sock weight yarns as well, especially striping sock yarn. If you have leftovers from socks, you can use the leftovers in this pattern as well. This pattern also looks great with two colors, one background and one foreground color.

The pattern also gives directions on how to dye a self striping yarn to make the wristwarmers shown.

For the charts, the knit st is the only st used when you use the charts and they are read from right to left (there is a comment in the pattern about the direction the charts are read, but not the st type).

Also, because this is a very small project, when you knit with only one color for two rows or so, carry the other color in the back. There’s no need to cut the yarn at all between rows, but make sure you don’t pull too tight when you start the next pattern row after single color rows.