Knitting graph paper - a totally cool idea for designing your own.

Did you know that you can print out graph paper for knitting, and mark it up for planning your knitting?

In this way, I planned how a new method (Fair Isle) for knitting would work for a gift I am knitting for my nephew.  The graph shapes are really rectangles, as knitted stitches take up more of a rectangular area than square.

See?

For this toque (hat) I marked out two different variations, then was better able to choose which one I wanted to take the time to knit.  

Fair Isle is so cool and easy - this one is multiples of three all around, but then you have one extra stitch.  Then the whole pattern gets shifted over one (1 out of the 3) each time.  You can also move it over by 2.  Much experimentation by me in the future to come. 

I am already feeling the urge though for these straight lines to curl off into spirals.  Totally hard to do at the crown, with knitting - but can repeat a few round the band after a bit.  Using the knitting graph paper, I can follow my own designed pattern.

Here is the paper I found online, which can be saved-printed here: