So, I am finally getting around to sharing this fair isle mug cozy pattern. I made it for the director of Autumn’s preschool for part of her holiday gift, hence the Christmas-y pictures. But I still wanted to share it, since I think that the fair isle snowflake is still pretty wintery. I think would look extra nice with blue and white or perhaps gray and white.
This was my first time doing fair isle knitting, which is also know as stranded color work. After I got the hang of it, it actually wasn’t too hard. The most complicated part was coming up with a design that would work as a mug cozy. I don’t know how many times I redesigned the snowflakes.
Here is the design:
Here is a PDF version of the above chart.
When I made this cozy I opted to knit it flat (as I hadn’t tried knitting in the round), then I stitched it up at the end. I recently learned you are supposed to read a knitting pattern from right to left, starting at the bottom right corner. I had always been reading it from left to right (which worked since my patterns have been symmetrical. But reading from right to left makes way more sense, and I feel kind of silly I didn’t realize it.
How to read a pattern and color change in the fair isle mug cozy
Here is a little visual of how it would look incase you need it. To start I have already casted on (using the long tail method) the first all red row.
Now we are going to look at the second row, reading from right to left, and you will see we need to knit one red, then one white. I have knit one red. Now I am going to insert my needle into the next stitch. But don’t yarn over.
Instead of yarning over with red, you are going to add your white yarn by looping it over the needle.
Then, pull that yarn to knit your stitch. So now you have one red stitch and one white stitch on your right needle. Which are the first two stitches of the row.
Continue knitting until the row is done. So now you have the second row on your needle. Remember the row you just knit is one your needle so you don’t really see the stitches in your cozy, if that makes sense. Coming from crochet it took me a while to get used this face.
If you are knitting this pattern in the round you would continue reading the pattern from right to left. At the start of each new round, you would go back to the the first stitch on the right of the new row.
It’s a bit different when knitting flat, since you will be working on the back of the piece every other row, which looks like this.
So instead of reading each row from left to right, you will be reading every other row from right to left. The rows you knit will be read left to right. And the rows you purl will be read right to left.
Overall the cozy came together very quickly. It has now started my love of doing fair isle knitting. I have so many ideas floating around in my head now. I’m really hoping to design some modernish type designs.
What about you?? Do you love fair isle items, or am I just a grandma at heart? Have a fantastic Wednesday friends!