Baseball jacket with Fair Isle (from pattern in Debbie Bliss’s Baby Cashmerino bk 4) Finished jacket with new buttons

I first knitted up this Debbie Bliss pattern a year ago in one of the smaller sizes and mother of the child and nanny liked it so much that I thought I do another. I had thought when I did it again I’d make button holes for the buttons (instead poppers beneath purely decorative buttons) but apparently the poppers are good as they’re not so fiddly to and stay fastened … so poppers it is once more. (This is size 12-24 months; the yarn is Debbie Bliss’s Baby Cashmerino.)

Fair Isle bands, including 2 sample knits

Fair Isle cuff on baseball jacket

I couldn’t resist a bit of Fair Isle but limited it to just a band around the bottom of the cuffs (and which I hope distracts attention from the West Ham United football kit colours). It never ceases to surprise me how different any single Fair Isle motif appears when done in different colour combinations. Some you fall in love with from the first row, while others don’t work at all until you hit the right colour combination. A bit like the impulse that powers you to work your way through a book of Sudokus, five at a time,  the patterns in Mary Jane Mugglestone’s book, 200 Fair Isle Designs, are utterly addictive and leave you itching to try another … and another … and another with the knowledge that using different colours means the possibilities are infinite.

Fair Isle pattern (from Mary Jane Mugglestone’s 200 Fair Isle Patterns)

Fair Isle band on baseball jacket cuff

Next week, Kaffe Fassett, after reading his autobiography and visiting an exhibition in the Victoria Gallery, Bath of  both his work and that of Candace Bahouth. Kaffe was such an inspiration when he burst upon the scene (in the 1970s?) and I was glad get a Kaffe refresher and a reminder of how he gave those timid in the use of colour the confidence to be a bit braver and brasher.

Mary Jane Mugglestone’s 200 Fair Isle Designs

15 July 2018: Settled on matt pinky-purple buttons from Ray stitch and sewed them on while watching Wimbledon on television as it ambled on to its 9 pm finish. The next morning I found I’d sewn four buttons on with purple thread and three with rusty red which looked the same in the growing dusk with just a table light and the glow from the television to sew by! Normally, this would distress me (well just slightly) but I realised I rather liked the – not too obvious – mismatch, so it remains!

Baseball jacket (Debbie Bliss pattern) big enough to see through next winter