Knitting

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There are things you just shouldn’t do

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And one of them, believe it or not, is knit every waking moment. Oh, sure, you can knit while riding in the car (back of a bike is difficult, especially if you drop your yarn… don’t ask me how I know), you can knit during meetings, lunch hours, or odd bits here and there. You really shouldn’t knit while driving. I’ve been guilty of this, on a really nice day, on a back road, going slowly, and knitting stockinette stitch. Scuba diving and knitting aren’t really compatible. But you know what else?

Knitting while exercising is totally doable! Unless you happen to be totally uncoordinated like I am, and keep falling off of the treadmill and eliptical. It’s just such a waste of time, walking or elipticalling, thinking about everything you could be doing, so I tried it. Not so good, but I’m getting the hang of it. Keeping it simple, it’s just a scarf for my granddaughter, but I fear the exercising part of it is falling by the wayside. Especially when I have to keep stopping to pick up my yarn. I’ll get there, took me awhile to get to where I could knit and walk at the same time too. And, yes, I do have one of those awesome Port-a-Pocket pouches, that helps.

And Podcasts! Who thought up that little time waster? My palm/phone/camera/portable brain has a large sd card and while it’s not an ipod, I can download podcasts and listen to them while I’m doing just about anything (again, the port-a-pocket pouch is great!). So now we have 3 things we’re doing. Elipticalling, knitting and listening to podcasts!

Check out podcasts, you can download and listen to them right on your computer. I’m not going to recommend any in particular, they’re all great, and most of these folks are just plain zany. Go to itunes and search for knitting podcasts. You’ll be hooked! Or needled. Or whatever!

So where do you knit? And what is the craziest thing you’ve ever been doing while knitting? Keep it clean folks.

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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!