Fereisle was published in the Interweave Knits Accessories Issue that came out around Christmas ( but as I said things were nuts and the memory is hazy). A cowl worked flat in chunky yarn and then seamed to close partway down it is a fast and interesting knit.
The story behind the design is a pretty silly one full of misconception and assumptions that lasted a few years. In my early years of knitting when this full blown addiction was still in it's infancy I had just begun to explore Fair Isle knitting. My husband had only heard me speak of Fair Isle in rushed tones while I frantically dug through a bag or more of yarn looking for the right colours and plotting a foray to the yarn store. Due to his poor hearing and my excitement Hubs the Great thought that it was actually called Feral Knitting, which he admitted to me about a year ago when reading an article over my shoulder.
After we both laughed ourselves into a bit of a frenzy I got to thinking about what Feral Fair Isle knitting might actually look like, fairly wild and unrestrained was my best guess. I like to create fair isle motifs on my weaving program as I find that it is the most freeing for patterning and the program works the pattern repeats for me so easily that I can really manipulate the images into exactly what I desire. So I sat down the create a feral fair isle motif, which turned out to be fairly geometric without any discernable quaint traditional fair isle patterning and only a few repeating rows. This I inserted into an angular shaped cowl with decreases to transition the cowl from the shoulders to the neck. The back of this cowl is worked in 1x1 ribbing to hug the head and the overlapping button flap can be left open or buttoned closed depending on your style.
