On a small island in Scotland’s far north – a pebble in the sea between Orkney and Shetland – a local community is renowned the world over for its distinctive colourful knitwear designs that are both hardy and highly desirable.
However, the origins of Fair Isle knit, which takes its name from its island home, are tightly bound up in folklore, and are as mysterious now as they were a century ago when the style was first in vogue.
While the term ‘Fair Isle’ has become a byword for all multicoloured patterned knitwear, strictly speaking, the term should just be reserved for the products created by a small group of knitters on this Shetland-administered island, who weave the fabric in much
