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.]

One of the fun things about knitters is that we will use a holiday theme on any kind of project. From Easter bunny socks to Christmas sweaters, there’s no combination of holiday motif and knitwear genre we won’t combine.

Case in point: Halloween cowls.

This fun cowl from Sweet Vireo Designs features large carved pumpkins and little cats and skulls. It uses two colors of DK weight yarn and I love the multicolored yarn for the background color on this one. And the braids! So cute.

Spooky Season by Jocelyn Tunney (also on Ravelry) uses fingering weight yarn in two colors to make a design with crescent moons and eyes. There are two circumferences and two heights available so you can make it a neck hugger or a slightly bigger project if you like.

Make more moons with the Broom Riding Cowl from Vanessa Ewing Knits. This two color pattern looks extra fun with a multicolored yarn for the colorwork, but you can use a solid as well. It calls for DK weight yarn but there is also a fingering weight version if you have some yarn in your stash you want to use.

Jinx Made has another fun Halloween cowl, this time covered in skulls. South Philly Skulls uses DK weight yarn and comes in two lengths, and there’s also a matching hat pattern, both of which can be found on Ravelry.

The Ghost Stories cowl from Melissa Knit Wear is a two-color cowl with ghosts of different sizes on the body. It uses DK weight yarn, and average sized skeins will allow you to get two cowls out of two skeins. It also calls for stitch markers to help you keep your place in the chart.

Or stitch up a cowl with a giant bat on it. The Nightling Cowl from Jen Immer uses DK weight yarn in two colors and has moons and a large bat on it. This pattern can be found on Ravelry.

How about spooky trees? The Weirwood Cowl from Andrea Krüß-Anders is inspired by the weirwood trees in the Game of Thrones books, and is worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn. You can find this free pattern on Ravelry.

If a bandana cowl is more your thing, try Cowloween from Tellybean Knits (on Ravelry). This colorful design is worked from the top down and features pumpkins, ghosts and candy colored stripes, and is worked in a light fingering weight yarn. There are kid and adult sizes available.

Have you read?