Pattern 6 – Mad for Fair Isle Batik Style

When we asked for patterns last fall (can you believe it was that long ago), many designers sent us ideas.  Many of them sounded really interesting and we would love to have been able to use them all.  Then there was Tina.  Tina sent us quite a few ideas and, as Felicia and I read them we thought they sounded ambitious and scary.  We may even have used the word crazy.

When her patterns started to arrive we were amazed to see that, what sounded crazy in writing, was really cool and creative as a pattern.  She submitted quite a few and they were all very different from each other – and different from anything we’d seen in general.  Although we hadn’t intended to use more than one pattern from a given designer, we found that it was in the best interest of Sock Madness to include more than one of her patterns.  Believe it or not, she’s still got more ideas and has offered to work something up for Sock Madness 2.  I say bring it on!

As usual, we have a few words from our designer:

BATIK SOCKS INSPIRATION

Hello sock knitters,

I’m so humbled to be here again but thrilled to share this sock pattern with you mad sock knitters!

Many use “Fair Isle” to describe the general technique of stranded colorwork, while others reserve “Fair Isle” for those specific patterns established on a small island in the north of Scotland.

I didn’t want to limit myself to the patterns of the Northern “Fair Isle” so I traveled south to the fair isles of Indonesia.

My Dutch grandmother lived in Indonesia for 7 years before my mother was born. Almost 60 years later my mother went with her sister to Indonesia for the first time to see all that she had heard about in her childhood. This Mad for Fair Isle Batik Style sock pattern is inspired by batik cloth my mother got on that trip.

To remain true to the original colors, I used blue and white for my socks. But I hope you’ll experiment and pick two contrasting colors you like. Or use one solid and one variegated like Hillary did in her tease photo. Just remember to choose which one will dominate and be your foreground color. While knitting always bring the dominant foreground yarn under the other yarn to knit the next stitch. In my sock the white yarn is dominant.

 

If you’re not familiar with color dominance, take a look at these explanations before starting:

http://treschicveronique.blogspot.com/2006/12/last-fo-of-year.html

http://nonaknits.typepad.com/nonaknits/2006/01/yarn_dominance.html

Good luck! and as my mother would say, “Veel breiplezier! (Happy Knitting!)

Tina Lorin

http://woolgatheringandmore.blogspot.com/