Monday, September 24, 2007

Here be tips.

Here are some of my favorite knitting tips... I will keep adding to this post as I discover new ones! Errata for my knitting patterns is at the bottom of this post.

CABLES:
Do you have loose purl stitches to the left of your cables? To tighten a purl stitch after a cable, bring the yarn under the needle (clockwise) instead of the standard purl (which goes over the needle, counter-clockwise [widdershins!]). Then make sure you knit into the back of the stitch on the reverse side. This creates a tighter purl stitch!

COLOR CHANGE (in ribbing):
I really hate how changing colors in ribbing gives you that jogging of the colors in the purls. To avoid that, knit all the stitches in the first row of your new color, then go back to your ribbing (K2, P2, or what-have-you) for the next row. Yaaaay, no jogging!

COLOR CHANGE (in stripes): To avoid jogging when knitting stripes in the round, work one row with the new color, remove your row marker, then lift the previous color stitch below the next color stitch and knit the two together. Replace your row marker (your row beginning will move). Yaaaay, no jogging!

FINISHING:
To make your finishing easier (or to create neat edges), make a "selvedge edge": just knit the last stitch of every row, and slip the 1st stitch at the beginning of every row. This makes a neater, prettier edge!

For yarns that you cannot spit-splice (like cotton or acrylic), I like to put a drop of (washable) fabric glue on the knots.

INCREASING/DECREASING:
You know when a pattern tells you to "increase evenly across the row"? For example, you have 20 stitches and it wants you to increase 4 stitches evenly spaced... where do you put those increases? The formula is: Divide the stitches you already have by the number of stitches you are to increase plus 1. So, it would be 20 divied by 5 (4+1) = 4, and you would work 4, increase, work 4, increase, etc. If it doesn't divide to a whole number, say you get 4.3, you would do the same thing (work 4, increase, work 4) except every once and a while you would put 5 stitches between them to make up for the decimal.

YARDAGE:
To see how much yarn you have left in that partly-used skein you have rolling about, use a board that is 18 inches long (I use a 18"x 24" canvas board I had lying around). Just wrap your yarn around it until you run out and count the number of loops you have wrapped around it: that will be how many yards you have (18 times 2 is 36").

MY ERRATA
I correct errors in my PDF patterns as soon as I become aware of them. If you have an earlier version of a pattern, however, please check here for errata.

Private Benjamin:
Page 2, Brim:
Row 2: S1, K1, M1R, place marker, K16, place marker, M1L, K2, pick up two more
stitches.
Row 4: S1, K to marker, M1R, slip marker, K16, slip marker, M1L, K to end, pick up two
more stitches.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree. Slip the first stitch and knit the last makes a much neater edge. Check out my web-site for other tips.
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