Book Review: No Needles Knitting

Years ago Vickie Howell wrote a book for kids about finger knitting, and as those crafty kids have grown up, she wanted to revisit the world of finger knitting for an older audience. The result is what she calls the unofficial sequel to that book, No Needles Knitting.

Instead of knitting by wrapping yarn around the fingers, this technique starts with a chain through which you pull up loops to form the stitches. This makes it more flexible because you can make more than four stitches at a time. You’re also working on a table top instead of holding the work on your fingers, which should produce less strain. (Finger knitting is also explored, as well as finger crochet.)

The book opens with a discussion of the yarns used and how to work knit and purl stitches, make cables, increase, decrease and add new yarn. You’ll also learn how to bind off, weave in ends and seam pieces of knitting together.

From there the book is full of projects to wear and to use in your space. It opens with a super bulky, boxy, striped cardigan, which is rated as a skill level 2 on a scale of 4. If you have some familiarity with knitting or crochet this might be a fine piece to start with, but I might choose something that didn’t need to fit a body to start with.

There’s also a cabled hat, basketweave cowl, flat hat and a couple of scarves, as well as a bag made out of T-shirt yarn, a shawl and a blanket yarn bed coat (aka robe) among other things. I love the tartan super scarf made with a base of stitches and contrasting color yarn woven through the stitches.

In the home section you’ll find things like a flower pillow, a fuzzy throw, a wreath and a throw pillow. There’s also a cute cat bed, a simple trivet and a basket. You can finger knit a vast cozy, stitch a strand of LED lights and turn plastic bags into upcycled hand knit placemats.

The book is fun and colorful and has projects for a variety of skill levels and that give you a lot of different looks, which is fun. There are 28 patterns in all, most of which fall in the skill level 2 or 3 area. There’s one level 4 project (a log cabin style throw) and five rated level 1. There are a few things here I think I’d enjoy making, and it’s also an inspiring book to show you what can be done with a bit of yarn and no needles.

About the book: 128 pages, paperback, 28 projects. Published 2025 by Quarry Books. Suggested retail price $22.99.

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]

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