Response to comments on "The trials of being head-strong"

Knitman,

I had to frog the mini-sock in the primary colourway to make a tension swatch to go with my college work (a full size pair of socks). At least I have a pair I can wear out of it. Alas, the yarn shop I got this cotton from has sold out. Yes, I know I did it completely in the wrong order. See what I mean about being head-strong?! :)

Sheila,

Yes, I love fair-isle too. I taught myself to hand-knit fairisle (with a little help from Mum) when I was about 11-12. I used to call it "graphics", probably because I was doing computers at school at the time and we were doing graphics on the BBC Basic B computers. My first ever attempt at fair-isle was girl and boy silhouettes in shocking pink and green mohair respectively, on a peach acrylic background. They were tight and I don't think I'd quite grasped the concept of weaving in at the ends - in hindsight, it might have been a design more suited to intarsia than fair-isle.

I've always had a fascination for drawing onto graph paper and converting it into "pixels", little realising it's a skill that would come into its own with my knitting in the future. Other designs I've done since include a heart with arrow through it, fingerless gloves with name across the knuckles or fingerless gloves with piano keys.

Alas, machine knitters can't knit in the round and do fair-isle at the same time. The needles would jam horribly. Still, we can do double jacquard - multi-coloured fairisle with striped, plain or birds-eye backing. All those nasty floats are hidden inside the knitting. That's if I can get my DBJ going on the Silver Reed - so far all I've produced is two row stripes and a LOT of swearwords! :)