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Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

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Open Country: Fair Isle Knitting

Fair Isle Knitting

31/07/2010

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country, Fair Isle Knitting

Fair Isle is famous for its knitting, but is it a dying tradition? Moira Hickey reports.

Fair Isle is famous for its knitting, but is it a dying tradition? Moira Hickey travels there to find out how important it is to island life.

Moira Hickey visits Fair Isle, famous around the world for its knitting. With a plentiful supply of wool from the island's hardy Shetland sheep, knitting kept many families from starvation, and the craft is still economically important for Fair Isle. Yet with Shetland schools soon to drop knitting from the curriculum, can it survive for much longer? Will Shetland's children still learn to knit, and if they don't, will it really matter? Moira Hickey visits Fair Isle to look at the importance of knitting to the islanders, and to ask what the future holds for this traditional craft.

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