When I think of charity knitting, I remember reading the scene in Little Women where sickly Beth sits by the window, tossing her hand knitted mittens to poor children passing by, mittenless, in the snow. It’s still a cold world out there.  You can put your leftover yarn to good use by knitting hats, socks, [...]

There’s a dark side to buying enough yarn for a project–sometimes enough turns out to be too much.  Rather than let that investment languish in your stash, following are some ways to optimize those leftovers. Once you have a pile of yarn that felts, you can find numerous free patterns online for felted bags, slippers, [...]

A very fun technique to try is felting your knitted project.  It seems complicated, but nothing could be simpler, and felting adds instant fun and whimsy. Narrowly defined, felting is taking unspun fibers (called roving–it looks sort of like very wispy hair), layering them and processing them (either via wet or dry means) to create [...]

If you are a knitter and haven’t discovered Ravelry yet, do I have a wonderful surprise for you.  Ravelry is more than just an online community of knitters, although if that were all it is, it would still be wonderful. When you create an account on Ravelry you can list what’s in your yarn stash, [...]

No one knits to save money these days. The days when womenfolk kept their families in handmade socks, mittens, hats and sweaters because they couldn’t afford store-bought are long gone.  The cost of good-quality yarn has risen to the point where knitting is a luxury, and many knitters stick to socks and shawls because yarn [...]

If there is one thing that will determine the success or failure of a knitted garment, it’s knowing the gauge of your knitting.  The gauge of a piece of knitted fabric is simply the number of stitches or rows per inch for a given yarn on a given needle size.  The number of stitches per [...]

The bane of every knitter is running out of yarn.  This usually happens when you are almost done, about halfway through your second sleeve.  And there’s still the collar to go.  You can’t always go back to the yarn store and get more because: Yarn is dyed in lots that don’t always match from one [...]

In part 1 of this post, I directed you to knittinghelp.com to learn the basics of knitting.  Now I’ll recommend a few more of their videos to round out your new skill set. You can create shapes other than rectangles by what are called shaping stitches–increasing and decreasing Increasing is adding more stitches in a [...]

I love it that Gen Y is rediscovering the very old, low-tech and traditional craft of knitting. If you want to learn to knit, perhaps you’re on a limited budget, and have to choose between knitting classes and yarn purchases. Save your dollars for yarn–the internet is packed with video tutorials–showing actual hands knitting–that cover [...]

The selection of yarn fibers has exploded in the last few years. Cotton, silk and linen yarns have been around for years, but lately yarns made of bamboo, corn and even seaweed have appeared. Bamboo yarn has a gorgeous sheen, linen has beautiful drape, and cotton will give you terrific stitch definition. However, yarns made [...]