Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Giveaway! Harmony Guides 101 Stitches To Knit Card Deck!

by

harmonyOne of the greatest challenges a knitter can face is finding the perfect stitch pattern for a project. Whether you want to create a highly textured lace scarf or revamp a basic sweater silhouette with a new stitch pattern, 101 Stitches to Knit is the perfect portable one-stop source for stitch inspiration.

Each card features a stitch design on the front side and concise easy-to-follow instructions on the back. A color-coded system which divides the cards into themes – Knit & Purl, Lace & Eyelets, and Cables & Arans – makes organization a breeze. Forget about carrying a hefty book or crinkled photocopy of a stitch pattern! These sturdy cards can be slipped into a handbag or wallet as a quick reference, making knitting during your commute or lunch break easy as pie!

Furthermore, the cards and eight-page booklet on basic knitting techniques are packed in a sturdy box frame. Whether you’re a beginning knitter or an expert, these handy compact cards promise inspiration for any knitted project.

The Harmony Guides have been longstanding references for handcrafters for more than thirty years, offering clear, concise instructions and photographs for stitches. British designer Erika Knight, author of the Simple Knits series, lends her expertise in the series redesign, updating The Harmony Guides with new stitches and know-how.

Wanna win this card set? Simply leave a comment, letting me know some of your favorite knitting blogs and I’ll put you in the contest to win. March 31 will be the last date!

Comments

  2. The blogs I check daily include The Yarn Harlot, Vickie Howell, The Rainey Sisters, Knitgrrl, And She Knits Too, The Heathen Housewife, and this blog, in addition to several others and some spinning blogs. Takes me forever to get through them all! LOL

  4. I’ve only recently begun to think seriously on designing complex knitwear, and have thus been more and more intrigued by stitch dictionaries in their various forms. I would love one to start playing with!

    I follow so many craft and knit blogs that it makes even my head spin, but here’s a few good ones:

    http://ysolda.com//wordpress/
    http://monstercrochet.blogspot.com/
    http://marniemaclean.com/words/index.html

    They happen to be the blogs of some of my favorite designers, and also the blogs that have really inspired me to start giving this “designing” thing a try.

  6. Not any specific blogs, I just like looking at the patterns and tutorials. Especially those on Knitty.

  14. I love stitch pattern guides and books. This year I fell in love with cowls and made several of them; the possibilities are endless with a good stitch reference. Thanks!

  17. Just the thing for when you have impulse yarn and a gift to make but no pattern — right where I am now! I answered on the other give away but more blogs I like are Knitters Anonymous and my daughter-in-law’s!

  20. Every morning starts with Yarn Harlot, Franklin Habit, Brooklyn Tweed and this site!

  21. I read a lot of knitting blogs, but a couple of my favourites are Cosmicpluto and The Plucky Knitter.

  23. Please enter me in this great giveaway – my favorite blogs are Vickie Howell, Yarn Harlot and Rachael’s Knitting Blogspot. Thanks!

  25. I am such a new beginner to knitting I haven’t really started to look up sites. I have used Lion Brand yarn site for many ideas and how-tos. I will be looking on many of the blogs that are mentioned. Thanks

  26. I’m an absolute newbie to knitting and haven’t looked up any knitting blogs yet…but that book looks like perfection and I’d still love a chance to win it!

    Kiki
    ParkingGoddessFTW at gmail dot com

  28. I am new to knitting. I am trying to knit on my own. This book will be very good to learn different things.

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]