Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

It’s a Purl Man to Do Live Podcast on YouTube

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I have to admit it’s been a while since I’ve listened to any knitting podcasts, but I remember liking It’s a Purl, Man, described by its creator, Guido Stein, as a show “about a guy form Boston with yarn issues.” He also says it’s “like Wayne’s World meets the Muppet Show meets Boston meets knitting,” which sounds pretty darn fun to me.

Doing a podcast is hard enough, but that’s not enough of a challenge for our Mr. Stein. This Saturday (Aug. 18) he’s going to do his podcast live and air it on YouTube at the same time.

This event will be taking place at 9 a.m. Eastern time and people who tune in can leave comments that will be discussed live. Sounds like a lot of fun!

Do you listen to any knitting (or other) podcasts? I’m going to be spending a lot of time alone in the car next weekend and just might need something to listen to.

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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!