Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

Help American Angels Support Our Troops!

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This is a cause that is close to my heart as I have a son who is currently in Iraq. Just saying that makes me cringe, but, yes, it was his choice, there is no draft, and we support him 274% (and want him to come home SOON!)

The following is taken directly from Knitting For Charity’s website:

A World of Ways to Make a Difference
If you love to craft, American Angels can use your help. There’s almost no skill they can’t put to work helping a soldier or their family, and knitting is certainly not an exception. Just a few things you could knit for this worthy charity include:

–black hats for winter helmet liners
Pattern here (personally, when I make these, I make the neck ribbing a bit longer so it covers more of the neck, oh, and just an FYI… make them out of superwash wool, or they will shrink. Ask me how I know. Ugh!
–slippers for soldiers overseas or in hospitals
–Christmas stockings, tree skirts, or ornaments
–an afghan (or “comfortghan”) for a wounded solider.

In addition to all this, American Angels has two subprojects that really stand out: the Baby Project and Heroghans.

The Citizen Sam website, here, has more ideas.

Oh, and, Merry Christmas Everyone!! Go out and play in the snow today.

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Have you read?

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!