Knitting

Free Patterns, Tutorials and Project Ideas

Pin of the Week: Drop Stitch Primer

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drop stitch knittingI think this may be the first time my pin of the week from my Knitting Pinterest board is actually something I pinned in the last week, but I’ve had lace knitting on the brain lately, and working with drop stitches is an even easier way to get an open, lace-like look, without the effort of keeping track of yarn overs and decreases.

Daria at Diary of a Creative Fanatic has a great roundup of resources and patterns using drop stitches, which you should check out if you’ve never used drop stitches in your knitting before, and even if you have. She covers a few basic ways to make drop stitches (including one of my favorites, seafoam stitch) and links to lots of free patterns using the technique.

I think I may just have to add that drop stitch tunic from Vogue Knitting to my to-knit list really soon. Too cute!

Have you ever used drop stitches? I’d love to hear what you think of them.

Comments

  1. I think your picture and explanation of the stitches and very clear and concise. Thank you for the information. I may work up the courage to try them now.

  3. Thank you so much for the shoutout to my site “Diary of a Creative Fanatic.com”.
    I appreciate the support and will be posting more knitting stitch primers in the future as well as crochet.

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts. 

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts. 

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects. 

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version. 

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want. 

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do. 

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like. 

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.