Crafty Thoughts: FairIsle Knitting (200 stitches a minute?)

There are a lot of different arts and crafts available in the shop, but there are an awful lot more crafts out there. We’re going to start a bi-weekly post featuring some of the more useful or just interesting videos about crafts, hobbies, and art, and just general notes out there. Ranging from old crafts, new methods and ideas, reviews of craft materials, and introductions to new hobbies, this is basically just a way for us to share the things that we though were interesting and hope you will too.

With all the yarn lovers who visit the shop, we’re going to start the series by looking at the Shetland island Fairisle knitting style, sometimes called “swathing”. This is an unusual knitting style, using a knitting belt and known for its speed. Experienced knitters were recorded by researchers in the thirties as reaching speeds of 200 stitches per minute: that is not a typing error. It’s even on film, so you can see in the history below, at a rate of 2 or 3 stitiches per second. We’ve included a couple of videos here, one about the history of by WoolyWoodlanders and a tutorial by another knitter below that.

Here’s a modern day demonstration and instructions uploaded by ybmagpye, who mentions that it actually requires concentration to do it slowly!