Knititng Daily to Offer 13 Free Patterns Today

It’s Friday the 13th, but Knitting Daily is taking some of the scary out of the day by posting links to one free pattern every hour starting at 6 a.m. (that’s U.S. Mountain time) until 13 patterns have been posted.

They’re calling it Freeday the 13th, and it’s already proving to be a lot of fun.

As I write this three patterns have been revealed:

Petite Feet: child’s socks from Ann Budd’s The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns
The Pointed Kerchief: a garter stitch head scarf with a cabled band by Lisa Shroyer
The Stitch N’Pitch Sock: a baseball-inspired sock for women designed by Amanda Berka and Melinda Barta

Find the rest of the patterns as the day goes on at the Knitting Daily Facebook page. [Update: All the patterns can be found at this link.] And let me know which patterns you download!

[Photo by Knitting Daily/Interweave Knits.]

Next Pattern:

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!

Next Pattern:

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