Fair Isle Knitting Question

[CardiffUniversityNetballTeam]

I have just started a vair nice fair isle kindle cover for DM for her birthday.
How do I stop the two yarns twisting round each other while I'm knitting? It's driving me bonkers! At the end of every row I keep having to put it down and untwist my working yarns before I start the next row. Aargh!!

[PurpleFrog]

Keep alternating the way you are twisting. i.e. instead of bringing the new yarn up over the outside of the old one each time, bring it up under the old one every second time.

[CardiffUniversityNetballTeam]

Thank you purplefrog, it's quite obvious really isn't it? What a wally!

[fossil971]

One way is to try to keep one yarn always as the "upper" and one as the "lower" colour. Someone once said to me to think of it as the lighter colour "floats" to the top. A bit of tangling is hard to avoid though at least with 2 colours you can untwist them - never attempt 3!

[PurpleFrog]

Actually, I have to admit that it is something I came across fairly recently myself. I suppose I do choose an upper and lower colour like fossil describes. This method gives nice horizontal lines on the back instead of lots of diagonal strands.

[tribpot]

Yes, it should be done with one colour dominant in every row and the other subordinate, based on which colour has the most number of stitches. There should be no diagonals lines in fair isle, it should look <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=1.bp.blogspot.com/-4y7JdyUD4_k/UOa0Eiy70DI/AAAAAAAAHcQ/epcd-K3bK2U/s640/TTB-%2BDADS%2BFAIR%2BISLE%2BPULLOVER%2B2012%2B04.jpg&imgrefurl=thebutterflybalcony.blogspot.com/2013/01/things-to-make-do-fair-isle-pullover.html&h=361&w=640&sz=147&tbnid=PYk0Ztu2zlgdAM:&tbnh=74&tbnw=131&zoom=1&usg=__mld7rY3-Qzx_9vDZ0J0l1hHXYg8=&docid=feBa6zfCL00-hM&sa=X&ei=-7yvUZLQN8P0Oba6gNAK&ved=0CG4Q9QEwCg&dur=3030" rel="nofollow noindex" target="_blank">like this.

This is pretty easy if you're doing , as you will have one colour in one hand and the other in the other.

There's a tutorial on fair isle here or have a look at Knitfreedom.

[fossil971]

TBH Fair isle always looks impressive on the back, I rarely get through a row without a few rogue twists but they don't stick out. I am just about to start a project for a competition though so I will pay attention to my dominant colour .

[tribpot]

This is a very good video if you don't mind the fact it appears to have been created in about 1985

Also this one.

A good way of keeping tension even when you're doing fair isle is to . Bonkers idea! But looks very effective.

I do strongly recommend the Rowan Knitting with Colour workshop, it is fab-u-lous.

[tribpot]

This is a really good video as well.

[Theas18]

two handed knitting helps. and it's not that hard

keep the floats lose, my experience is that blocking is magical ( assuming you use a high percentage wool yarn) they just seem to even and sort themselves out.