Hønsestrik is a knitting style from Denmark in the 1970s. It is stranded colour work, similar to Fair Isle knitting from the Shetland Islands. It uses bright, contrasting colours, and non-traditional patterns.

If you saw my hourly comics day illustrations then you might have noticed that I picked up a book on Honsestrik from the library a couple of weeks ago.

It was this one, by Anna Bouer:

There are lots of cool pattern charts and the idea is you combine them together however you like. The book is extremely light on how to do the actual knitting though, and having never done any colour work before (except, apparently, a two colour brioche hat that I have only a vague memory of making), I didn’t think it was a good idea to just jump in and try and make something here.

I literally had no clue where to start. And then the YouTube algorithm recommended to me a video of a tutorial to make a Fair Isle bookmark. Perfect! The video is from Jamieson & Smith, a Shetland wool broker and the tutorial is given by a lady called Hazel Tindall. I loved how she explained why we were doing each thing, such as increasing after the border because the Fair Isle part tends to pull in. I also loved how she was very relaxed about it all. Don’t worry too much about counting or mistakes or tension, etc.

And it worked! After one false start with weird yarn, I got the hang of having one colour in each hand and it was pretty straightforward.

In the description of the YouTube video there is a link to a downloadable pattern and chart for the bookmark, but I chose one of the small repeating patterns from the Honsestrik book instead.

I found the steek to be the trickiest part as I’ve never done one of those before either. A steek is when you knit in the round and then cut it to make the piece flat. Cutting it was fine but then you sort of fold it back and sew it down to neaten it. Mine is a bit chunky at those parts and the sides slightly pull in.

Next, I think I want to make something slightly larger and fully in the round. Maybe a hat or some gloves. The long term goal being to make a full sweater. I need to find some nice non-itchy wool first though…