My dad always wore a tweed jacket with 'flannels' - plain trousers.

I can get hold of oddments of yarns from Harris - I supose they are leftovers from the weaving. When twisted together to a neutral spirality they are just about soft enough for tough socks, and the colours are sedate but very pleasant.

The yarn, being intended for weaving is twisted far more than knitting yarn, so by putting two strands together and then untwisting so they spiral around eachother it softens the feel and knitting does not skew, which would happen if the yarn was used as it comes.

Harris tweed socks must be rarer than Harris tweed kilt suits - though not for long I hope. The kilts look good, but the suit is something else!! I think that the more adventurous tweeds look just as sharp as tartan for a kilt, but they are dubdued enough to make a really good suit.

I once met a man dressed in tarten trews with all the accessories, the shock was a physical one as he appeared suddenly around a corner in a small town in the south of England - he should have had a man walking in front with a flag or warning sign.

You can have too much tartan, but the tweeds, I think, are far milder - possibly from an older tradition which (I suspect) might just be truer to the concept of the kilt than the Victorian fad for tartans.

I think that tweed material is far more masculine - I supose by association, and I probably will not be making myself a tweed kilt. Some women are 'tweedy', though they usually stomp around in green wellies with a shotgun and flat cap and a skirt belonging to their mother, or even grandmother. The tweed kilt suit though - I could see Steed of the Avengers in a tweed kilt suit.