Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

Mad Man Knitting Seeks Support

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mad man knitting teddy bearI’ve told you before about Mad Mad Knitting, aka Gregory Patrick, a guy who it would not be a stretch to say was able to turn his life around by knitting teddy bears. Last year he launched an indiegogo campaign to raise money for supplies, which raised nearly $4,000 when his goal had been just $1,000.

He’s asking for some help again, this time because he’s overwhelmed with orders. He needs to be knitting in order to pay the bills, but he doesn’t have time to take on more orders (which is almost a nice problem to have) but needs help with expenses while he’s finishing up all the orders he already has pending.

If you want to knit a cute teddy bear (or bunny) for yourself you can buy his knitting pattern, or grab a copy of his ebook, all about how he made his journey from homelessness to beloved knitter of adorable toys. Either one will run you less than $3 and will go toward helping support and encourage a knitter who could use some of both right now.

Plus, the patterns are just really darn cute.

[Photo via Craftsy.]

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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!