Linkety-link, part 23

I didn’t quite manage to finish writing the post about brioche knitting I wanted to post this week, so I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a long time: a link post! (Click on the links tag at the bottom of the post to visit my other link posts. No guarantees that all sites linked in my older posts still exist, alas.)

Here’s five things elseweb I think are particularly interesting:

• The TECHknitting blog is back (this is big news by itself), and here’s a great article about some of why gauge varies from knitter to knitter.
• How to keep knitted hems from flipping up.
• A Kate Atherley article about different kinds of short rows: Short Row Basics, part 2. Part 1 is linked at the beginning of the article, so make sure to read it too if you’re new to short rows.
• A feature comparison of fourteen different interchangeable knitting needle sets.
• Here is a delightful video from an embroiderer, Charlie of the Stitchery channel on YouTube, who came up with a method for embroidering words using binary code and lattice stitching. This is right up my alley, and if you’re interested in my kind of knitting codes, you’ll like this too.

These are a few of my favorite posts

I drew a complete blank about what to write about this week. (It happens to everyone sometimes!) Instead, I’m going to share some links to some of my favorite technique posts that I’ve written.

Linkety-link part 22

First, a useful link elsewhere:

• how to bind off if there’s not enough yarn (without unraveling a row). LaVisch designs has some other useful tutorials, too. Check them out!

Second, three links to some older posts of mine I think you might find useful:

• Figuring the percentage of a circle that’s been made
• Striped triangles: how much yarn?
• Concentric circles: how much yarn?

Linkety-link, part 21

Here’s links to a bunch of techniques and tutorials I’ve collected since the last time I posted one of these link lists. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did! I’ve included some crochet links even though I can’t use them myself, just because I thought they were interesting.

Knitting

• Mosaic Knitting 101 – mosaic knitting is a way of knitting fancy colorwork patterns while only working with one color at a time.
• A Cheater’s Guide to Wraps Per Inch (wpi): the first method for figuring out what needle size to use with yarn is one I use all the time. I’m a tight knitter; you might need to learn to adjust based on whether you’re a tight or loose knitter.No More Estimating Tail Length for a Long Tail CO: this is how I do it for long cast-ons.
• How to hang a sweater without ruining it.
• How to knit a 2 color Italian cast-on (good for 2 color brioche)
• Seaming 2 color brioche with mattress stitch
• Instructions for lots of different shawl shapes
• Underline stitch: an interesting stitch pattern technique

Crochet

• Better Tunisian crochet increases at the ends of rows.
• Fifteen freeform crochet tutorials.
• Using drinking straws to make bullion stitch easier.

Linkety-link, part 20

It’s been a while since I did a link round-up!

Knitted Borders and Corners – some different ways of approaching corners when working a knitted-on border.

Learning, Practicing, Perfecting – Sara Lamb writes here about the learning process in respect to weaving and leatherwork, but the process itself is universal to handcraft. Well worth reading.

Non-roll Stocking Stitch Edge? – well, not exactly. This post tells how to use twined knitting to make what looks like a stockinette hem that won’t curl.

Bunny ears decreases– I’ve talked a little about the 3-to-2 decrease I like to use, that some people call Bunny Ears Back. It produces a symmetrical single decrease that doesn’t appear to lean to either side. They are now accounted for in Stitch Maps, which makes me happy. The linked blog post also shows a couple of stitch patterns making use of them – I really like Little Hearts a lot and am planning on making use of it. A more complex stitch pattern of mine that uses them is Beloved – and I can see that I’ll need to go edit the stitch map!

Taming long floats via the STUART method for color-knitting – an intriguing trick from TECHknitter (so many of her tricks are intriguing) for dealing with long floats. This looks like it might be the key for knitting more of my code grids as colorwork even with long floats. Hm!

Linkety-link part #19

Here’s an interesting set of stitch patterns with an interesting technique:

• Crimped Row Stitch #1
• Crimped Row Stitch #2 (and with stripes)
• Crimped Row Stitch #3 (and offset variation)

And here’s some more miscellaneous links:

• some methods for darning from Twist Collective
• purl decreases from TECHKnitter
• picking up stitches along a selvedge, also from TECHKnitter
• Just in case it’s not obvious, perhaps you should just read everything on TECHKnitter’s blog!

Linkety-link, part 18: Equinox Edition

Happy Spring, everyone! It seems like a good moment to link to the Equinox stitch pattern I designed a while ago.

And here are some other links:

• TECHKnitting has a post about pinstriping, which is a great name for the technique I used in my Scored hat pattern. There’s a bunch of later posts showing uses and variations on pinstriping; I recommend looking at them all.
• Several methods for seaming from Knitty.
• A clever idea for making an insole into a slipper sole. I’m linking to the pin I found on Pinterest because I’m finding the original site (linked from the pin) hard to navigate. Still, I think the photo is clear enough.
• Make 1 stitch into 5, from  Impeccable Knits; useful for closed ring cables (probably for lace, too).
• Two variants of a double increase (Ravelry links) from Impeccable Knits.

A few links, part 17

Not very many links this time, because Pinterest has become frustrating to me. I need to find a better place to discover and bookmark interesting yarncraft things. Any suggestions? I don’t care if they have ads, but I want them to not suggest pins to me from people I don’t follow.

• A Twined Knitting cast-on, and also  sources for commercial Z-plied yarn for twined knitting.
• A series of posts on how to read your knitting. I don’t agree that nobody talks or writes about it, but it is true that it’s a very helpful thing to be able to do.
• And TECHKnitter has been posting again lately! Here’s a couple of the latests posts. And if you don’t have TECHKnitting in your RSS reader, whyever not?
  • I cord bind-off, I-cord selvedge border
  • Picking up stitches along a selvedge
  • Sweater-saver: reknitting the cuffs of a purple sweater

Linkety-link, part 16

Here are some links to interesting knitting things I’ve seen recently (if you follow me on Pinterest, you’ve probably seen them already).

Knitting

• Four examples of i-cord cast-ons.
• Taming the Tubular Cast-on
• Meet the Increase Bind-Off
• Joining a Vikkel Braid in the Round
• How to Fix Mistakes in Brioche Knitting

On learning, and fear of failure

I wasn’t going to post today, since I made the Tau Day post yesterday. But I’ve been thinking about writing a post encouraging people to embrace mistakes and go ahead and try things they want to do even if they think they can’t do them. And I just read a post by Tien Chu that says much of what I wanted to say, only better. (Hm, maybe I should take my own advice.) Anyway, I think everyone should go read it: On Developing Skills. Here’s a quote:

Don’t let the fact that your early work sucks bother you. It’s going to suck. It’s good that it sucks, because if you can let go of needing to be good at it, you can get on with the real work, which is improving the skills that you’ll need to produce better work. As a weaving teacher I know tells her students, “Don’t worry about making the first piece perfect. You’re not making a scarf – you’re making a weaver.”

I may yet write my own post about this, but it’s a cornerstone of the way I go about exploring my work with yarn, and other things too.