Knitting

Patterns, projects and techniques

Spring+Summer Knitty is Here!

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easy as pie knittyIt’s Knitty time again, and it looks like the spring+summer issue is bringing us lots of great projects to queue, as usual.

My favorite may well be the colorful Easy as Pie Blanket, perfect for the little kid in your life. It’s shaped with short rows and would be a great stash buster if you didn’t mind the circles not matching.

Heading into summer there are lots of tank top patterns here. I like the super-sultry Daphne Tank, perfect knitting for your inner bombshell, and the lace-paneled Etherial Tank, which may actually be going in my queue.

There are several great shawls in this issue, too, to help you make the transition to warmer weather and protect you in the air conditioning. The Nori Shawl is a lovely lace number worked sideways form tip to tip in a sort of zig-zag lace, and it only uses one skein of sock yarn. And then there’s the fun Steps Shawl, which uses tucked pieces worked in different colors to shape the shawl into a spiral. Fun!

See anything you like? I’d love to here what’s going in your queue!

[Photo via Knitty.]

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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!