Knitting Basics: Learning to Read Your Knitting

This is an old post I came across several months ago, but I wanted to share it because I’m hoping some of you have the New Year’s resolution to improve your knitting skills, and one great way to do that is to take some time to get a better understanding of how knitting works, what you’re actually doing when you form the stitches and how to read your knitting.

This post from the Craft Sessions goes into great detail about how to look at and understand your knitting stitches. It deals with Stockinette Stitch, because that’s a stitch pattern that makes it easy to see the differences between knitting and purling (I have a little post at About that’s less detailed but looks at ribbing).

There are lots of big pictures, using big stitches, to help you see what’s happening, but of course it would be best if you worked along with the post, looking at your own knitting as you go so you can really understand it.

What’s the big deal about reading your knitting? Once you know your knits from your purls and how they’re supposed to look — in Stockinette and in other stitch patterns — you’ll be able to spot mistakes more readily and you’ll know how to fix them. It’s a big step in taking control of your knitting.

[Photo via the Craft Sessions.]

Next Pattern:

I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]

Next Pattern:

Have you read?