Cool Knitting Tools to Make Getting the Right Size Easier

September 29, 2015 by Sarah White

I collect a lot of links to a lot of different things so I always have lots of options for things to share with you. Sometimes a theme emerges from the things I have found, and lately it seems I’ve found quite a few things that will help you with measurements and the math of knitting.

First, Knitting Daily has a free (with free subscription) ebook full of tips for how to measure yourself. If you’ve ever wondered exactly where a hip measurement is supposed to be take from or what sort of ease you should choose in a pattern, this is a great resource. It also includes four free sweater patterns you can try these principles on and be sure to get a great fit.

Sometimes a knitting pattern doesn’t give you quite all the information you would like when it comes to shaping. All too often patterns will say something like “decrease 10 stitches evenly across the row.” That’s because the designer didn’t want to do the math to figure out how to do that in every size offered. But the good news is there are online tools that can help you figure it out for your size, such as Eskimimi’s Knitulator, which I just recently found. You can figure out how to increase or decrease evenly by putting in how many stitches you have to start with and how many stitches you need to end up with, and it will give you options for how to do it. Easy!

Hats are common projects in the fall and winter and make great gifts, but it can sometimes be difficult to know what size to make, especially if you’re making up a pattern as you go. These great infographics from Cyndi Byars via Petals to Picots are super handy, and show all the measurements you would need to make a hat for anyone, preemie to adult male. You’ll see how big around the hat should be, how tall the body should be before shaping, even how big the circumference of the top should be if you want to knit a hat from the top down. Such great stuff!

Have you come across any great knitting resources lately? I’d love to know what you’re learning!

[Image via Petals to Picots.]

Comments

Dot says
September 29, 2015 at 6:36 pm
This is not a new resource, but it’s one that I use over and over. David MacKay’s Heels by Number chart gives instructions for turning six different sock heels, on socks that range from 40 to 80 stitches around. It’s now on Ravelry:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/heels-by-number

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]