Free Knitting Pattern: Kaffe Fassett’s Islay

I have a little bit of an obsession with Kaffe Fassett. The British master of color produces some glorious knits, but so many of them require so many different colors of yarn that you don’t even want to think about how much such a garment would cost, not to mention how long it would take and how much attention it would need to knit it.

(Actually, I did think about it once. The first book of his I ever reviewed, Kaffe Knits Again, includes a beautiful wrap he calls the Stepped Flowers Stole. It’s sort of like the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt pattern, but in knitting. It calls of 24 balls of 15 different colors of yarn, for a total yarn cost of about $263.)

Rowan has a new free pattern of Fassett’s out, called Isaly. It’s a women’s pullover in multicolored squares and crosses (and another one of those huge-number-of-color projects, this time with 14). It’s a beauty, and the colorwork is not that difficult since it’s all simple shapes, so long as you can keep up with the color changes.

The chart is in black and white, too, so it’s a little dizzying. The pattern is available for free as a PDF (in four languages), but you have to register an account with Rowan (they don’t require a lot of personal information) to access it. Which is probably worth it to take a closer look at this beauty (I’m sure there’s a way to cut down on the number of colors used, too, though it wouldn’t be a true Fassett at that point, it would still be really pretty).

[Photo by Rowan.]

Looking for knitting patterns for knitted Cardigans? Check out these Knitting patterns we found on Etsy.

Looking for pullover and sweater patterns? Check these books out.