Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

The Fearless Knitter by Jennifer E Seiffert

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This Fearless Knitting Workbook, The Step-by-Step guide to Knitting Confidence by Jennifer E. Seiffert will truly make you a fearless knitter. She starts with the basics such as tools, gauge and how to get it, how to adjust when you don’t get it, where to sit, make sure there’s a cat nearby, you know, all the basics. Assessing mistakes, blocking, seams.. all the stuff a good knitter needs to know.

Next comes the knit and purl stitch and combining them. She talks you through a ribbed sampler and a checkerboard square, and bam! When your checkerboard square is finished do you realize what has happened? You’ve learned to read a chart! She sneaks that one in there pretty good! Raised stitches in a Maple Leaf and Oak Leaf Squares, and next thing you know, you have a couple of really pretty pillows. Shaping, increases and decreases, cables and crossed stitches, you’ll be an expert in no time.

And then, just when you think you can tackle anything, you get to make holes. Intentionally! Lace! You’ve just knitted lace and there’s no stopping you now. Learn how to knit in the round with either circs or dpns; (knitter speak for circular needles and double pointed needles). Put all of that together and tackle the projects at the end, which by now are easy for you.

This hardcover book, with a spiral binding to keep it open, for reference is indispensible for the newer knitter. Even the seasoned pro can learn a few tips (ask me how I know..). From Interweave Press, here: www.interweavestore.com

Comments

  1. hi jen,
    there was no date so this may be a really old blog entry of yours? i feel your sockknitting pain as of this week. i have tried and tried and tried. i think, if anyone says they knit abunch of socks and love it, hold onto your wallet cause they are lying, LYING!
    =)
    xx
    angelina

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]