At the moment knitting swatches to improve what I do is about the best way to squeeze in a bit of knitting in between other more hectic 'real life' things such as getting dinner ready or tidying the house (yes I make it sound like I'm fully domesticated don't I!) so these were just worked up using a variety of yarns to test alternating colours with working solid rows of colour but carrying the yarn across the row as you work (to avoid massive long looping floats at the back of your work).
Both came out fairly OK. I wasn't working to a pattern, just working on the theory that most Fair Isle patterns follow some sort of repetitive number of stitches that begin to form an attractive design. In the stuff I really admire, expert knitters turn this to their advantage by creating all manner of geometric shapes, swirls, stars and of course for ugly Christmas sweaters lots of snowflakes!
The two swatches were also a good test of trying out different combinations of colours. Some colourschemes clearly won't work at all together, but red and grey look great as did the black and grey. I keep thinking I'd like to be really crazy and ambitious and start working extra colours in for each part of the design of the eventual sweater, but small steps first (and to be honest I'm only just getting to a point where juggling two balls of yarn at the same time doesn't end up with me wrapped in the damned stuff, or unpicking / untangling the two balls from each other when I've cast off!)
On the subject of yarn, I still find it nearly impossible to knit with DK, even if I use tiny thin needles. For this Christmas sweater I'm going to go chunky all the way, the chunkier the better in fact. Some folk hate knitting chunky wool because they hate the way it snags but for me it's still the best way to keep my work neat and looking a bit more like knitting and less like a complete trash fire.
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