In need of diced hose pattern

[idyllicchick]

Instead she has been knitting one stitch green and the next stitch black.

The small and large Shepherd's Plaid in Gainford's book calls for doing this as well. Just two colors, no marled yarn. Matt's hose pictured above were knit up using this technique, as opposed to the photo in the original post which does use marled yarn.

I think they both look great! But like you all have been saying, finding that marled yarn is going to be tough.

[Pleater]

I'd have thought that most folks could make the marled yarn - well anyone with some smallish, smooth sticks could.

You would need to have single colour yarns composed of two strands, to make it easy.

Just take equal lengths of the two whole colours, each one half the weight for the two socks. Wind each one onto a stick.

Separate the strands and tie one to each of two sticks, then wind the separate strands. The easiest way to work is to stand on the landing on the top floor of your house, unwind a good length of the yarn, tie a half hitch or two to stop the rest unwinding and lower it down, then the source will rotate happily as you wind the separate threads, storing the twist for the next stage which is combining the two colours.

For that you just tie on the two colour threads, lower the stick and wait until it stops spinning, haul it up, wind on the marled yarn, repeat until done. Theoretically there should be enough to make one sock from each lot.

I use a figure of eight winding on, which my father learned from his mother, as it is much faster than simply rotating the stick, and it doesn't alter the twist of the threads. The sticks are 12 to 18 inch dowels rubbed with wax afrer being rounded off at each end.

I call them 'ooks' - to differentiate them from pointed sticks, which are, of course, called 'eek!'s. I think that they go back quite a way in the scheme of Human tool use.

Anne the Pleater