IT is, in the words of one observer, like Pop Idol with the music replaced by the click of knitting needles and American spinsters instead of singers.

For Susan Jane Stamm, a 49-year-old from Connecticut, the next few months will decide whether her dream of living and knitting on a remote island can become reality.

She believes that she is the ideal candidate to take up residence on Fair Isle, the tiny island between Orkney and Shetland where the National Trust for Scotland is seeking tenants for two houses. First, however, she has to prove her worth to the community.

“I’m open-minded, I come down four-square on the side of gentleness, and I believe love is the most powerful force in the world,” said Ms Stamm as she prepared to charm the island’s 70 inhabitants.

Instead of the likes of Simon Cowell and Pete Waterman, she will be judged by the Fair Isle housing forum, a six-strong panel comprising three crofters, the postmistress, a retired minister and a representative from the Trust, which owns the island. They have said that they are keen to attract residents with skills in construction or knitters to join Fair Isle’s world-famous knitting co-operative.

The panel will produce a shortlist of eight by Christmas. A final four will then be invited to spend three days on the island next spring. The two successful candidates will be announced by May. Yesterday Ms Stamm, an IT consultant from the town of New Britain, arrived at Fair Isle in a plane.

As the weather turned “generally cloudy”, she remained defiant about her plans to move from a suburb where summer temperatures reach 35C (95F). “I’m very uncomfortable in hot weather,” said Ms Stamm, a single woman whose only ties are to her three cats.

Ms Stamm is one of more than 800 Americans, mostly knitters, who contacted the Trust after hearing a radio broadcast. Even in a country where knitting has been reinvented as a “sexy” pastime for women, the response in the US has been extraordinary. On websites ranging from Iowa Chicks Knitting to Stitch’ n’Bitch groups and even QueerKnit — a webring for “gay, lesbian, bi and trans knitters” — dreamy messages have appeared describing Fair Isle as “knit-nirvana”.

Of 90 applications received by the deadline earlier this month, 70 were from the US, while others came from Scotland, England, Wales, Hungary and Australia. Angus Jack, the Trust’s regional surveyor who is handling the leasing programme, said: “About 50 per cent of the American applicants are single women and the rest are couples and families. They’re mainly knitters, though there’s a few couples who have both knitting and construction skills.”

Fiona Mitchell, the postmistress and secretary of the housing forum, mused: “It’s quite bizarre in a way that there have been so many applications from America. Does it say something about them or does it say something about us?”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• From awkward boy to debonair man in an hour
• Debbie Purdy on living, loving and dying
• Atonement to be turned into opera