Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

A Few of My Favorite Things for Knitters

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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!

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Make Your Knitting Machine Scarves Better

I feel like it’s been a while since I’ve shared any patterns for our circular knitting machine users. I know these devices aren’t for everyone but even though I much prefer knitting by hand, it is kind of fun to crank things out on these machines.

One of the most common early projects for a circular knitting machine is a scarf. Which makes sense, because it’s just one long tube and you can make it as long as you like.

One problem that comes from knitting scarves on the circular knitting machine, though, is that it can be hard to know how to finish the ends of the tube so that it looks like a finished scarf and not a tube of knitting.

If you’re not a knitter or crocheter, the most basic way to finish a circular knitting machine scarf is just by cinching up the ends and maybe adding a pompom to each end to cover up any hole that might still be visible at the end.

But if you have a little knitting or crochet skill or are willing to learn, there are a lot of different options for closing up the ends of a scarf. And this would also be true if you hand knit a tube scarf!

I recently wrote a post over at Our Daily Craft that includes five different ways to close up the ends of a tube scarf:

  • the simple cinching method mentioned above
  • sewing the stitches together
  • three needle bind off
  • grafting
  • crochet bind off

Grafting is my favorite because I feel like it gives the cleanest, closest to a seamless look. If you’re a knitter you may already know how to do it but even if you don’t it’s not that hard to learn.

Do you knit tube scarves by hand or machine? I’d love to know how you like to finish them!