A Few of My Favorite Things for Knitters

It’s that time of year when you might want to shop for something special for a knitter (or crocheter!) in your life, or when you might want to start dropping hints for someone who might want to buy something for you this holiday season.

Either way, I’ve got just the thing on my list of gift ideas for knitters and crocheters. The full list is over on my blog Our Daily Craft, but I wanted to share a few of the highlights here to get a conversation going about great gifts for knitters.

This year I really want to get some knitter’s barber cord. There are lots of knockoffs of this product out there, but as far as I can tell Handsome Fibers on Etsy was the first to sell it. It’s a flexible cord that you can slip over your needle points (up to size 9 US/5.5mm) so that you can slip on a top-down sweater or a sleeve without having to slip all the stitches onto a piece of yarn, then back onto the needle. I feel like this would save me a ton of time, and they’re just fun besides.

I love a good knitting toolkit that can hold a bunch of tools in one place for your travel knitting kit (or to keep near wherever you knit most often). I’ve got my eye on a Akerworks knitting and crochet kit, which includes a needle gauge, swatch gauge, tiny scissors, a tape measure, stitch markers and darning needles.

And this is one I already have, but I was recently reminded how much I love my set of Fix-A-Stitch double-ended crochet hooks. These short hooks are perfect for picking up dropped stitches, and because they have hooks on both ends you can move the tool around instead of having to flip the fabric when you’re fixing a dropped stitch in garter stitch. It’s honestly the coolest thing and they’re great for fixing stitches in any other kind of fabric, too.

So, you tell me, what did I miss? Do you have a favorite knitting tool or accessory that you think every knitter should have? Tell me about it!

Next Pattern:

When I knit socks (which sadly I have not done in a while; need to get a new pair on the needles soon!) I generally stick to pretty simple designs and colorwork that isn’t all that detailed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a fancy sock, I’m also just pretty lazy and I figure a project worked on size 0 or 1 US needles is going to take a long time even without the added work of intricate colorwork, so why make it more complicated?

But there are definitely socks out there I’d be willing to make an exception for, and I think Tangled Bliss by Annette Schleicher may just be one of them.

If you can’t tell from looking, this is decidedly an advanced knitting pattern. There’s brioche for the cuffs, complex looking colorwork done with the ladderback jacquard technique, multiple charts, and colors changing everywhere.

There are links to tutorials for all the special skills in the pattern, but still it would help to have a handle on these concepts before you get started.

The pattern uses three colors of light fingering weight yarn at a whopping 31 stitches per 4 inches/10 cm (that’s 7.75 stitches per inch/2.5 cm).

Would you believe me if I told you that this pattern was designed for a speed knitting contest? Speed would be the last thing on my mind.

But again, I think all the work for these fancy socks would be worth it. I love hoe the colorwork looks like an old tile floor, and think of the bragging rights when you tell people you made them yourself. (Though of course you did; have you ever seen store-bought socks that look anything like this?)

Best of all, this pattern is available for free on Ravelry, so there’s no reason not to give it a try if you’ve got the skills. If you do, I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Annette Schleicher]

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Next Pattern:

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