Today I have been designing on paper, making my own colour chart for a Fair Isle project. There are lots of sources out there for traditional Fair Isle patterns - my favourite is Alice Starmore's Book of Fair Isle Knitting - and we can create our own designs from scratch, too, inspired by repeating patterns in the world around us. Grab yourself some squared paper and coloured pencils and you can have a go.
The classic Shetland "all-overs" have patterns that repeat over 32 stitches or more, but for beginners I'd recommend starting with "peerie" patterns that repeat over a smaller number of stitches - they're easier to memorise so you can knit away without consulting the chart. The simplest have only two rows - you can get a pretty zig-zag from 101010 one row followed by 010101 on the next.
Thanks to my sister for pointing me towards this glorious BBC article from last year with wonderful old photographs of Shetland islanders in their knitwear. An inspiration!
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