#knitting hacks

[freewolftimetravel]

Y’all, I need to share the best knitting resource I have EVER found.

Patty Lyon’s Knitting Bag Of Tricks

This book is the biggest knitting lifesaver. It has tips for everything from how to make a proper gauge swatch (that will actually be useful!) to fixing that horrible nubbin when joining in the round to squared off corners on your bind-off and so much more!

Anytime I start a project now, I check this book for tips and tricks. I’ve yet to come up empty. My knitting has improved more than I thought possible with only a handful of small, well explained techniques given in a very down-to-earth manner. Even my tension and consistency have improved leaps and bounds!

I seriously cannot recommend this book enough. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro, self-taught or taught by experts, I am sure that you will find something helpful in this book.

Happy knitting!

P.S. here is the ISBN number of the book, in case you have a hard time finding it by title for some reason.

ISBN-13: 9781446309117

P.P.S. Sorry I sound like a salesman here, this book has just really been an absolute lifesaver and I’ve been needing to gush about it to someone other than my mom and fiancé for a while now.

[uwakroh]

Hello, so I just bought a yarn winder and I’m LOVING IT so I’m going through my entire yarn stash to wind them into cakes. However, I always prefer the center pull and was annoyed when the finished cakes would easily start coming undone when I dropped it (or when my cat stole it from me). Therefore, I have created something either really smart or overly complicated for a small problem that I could just learn to deal with-

So basically what I did was before winding the yarn, I put a small strip of cardstock and tied it to the shaft thingy with a coiled hair tie cut in half (for easy removal). Then I’ll wind the yarn and when I’m done, I just tape the two ends of the cardstock together so it makes a band around the yarn and then cut two slits for both ends of yarn. For the yarn that I have labels for, I write the name and hook/needle size on the paper.

The great thing is that (because I like the center pull and it doesn’t work with this method) I can just cut the band off when I need the yarn and remake the cake. The cake will get messed up when I use it anyways so may as well just remake the labels.

And here’s what it looks like:

And when it’s set up:

[hobiesdump]

Hobie headcanon: using soda tabs to mark their knitting

[witchycrochet]

When knitting with dpns, I tend to use my fingers to push the needles. After only a row, the tips of my index fingers hurt terribly. Especially with the smaller needles or my biggest set, which seems to have this one needle with a very sharp and rough tip. To help with this, I take about four bandaids and layer them with the padding sitting where the needle tips press. This helps a lot, so I thought I would share my little knitting "hack". Also, I would love to hear what your hacks for this problem are.

[bainofmyexistence]

Knitting hack: if you’re farsighted like I am, it can be hard to follow tiny charts in knitting patterns. I’m prone to highlighting rows I’ve finished to help keep track of what I’ve done, but highlighting the row I’m working on makes more sense. But it doesn’t make sense if it’s a chart you repeat over and over in a pattern, or if you want to reuse the chart and knit the same pattern again.

I bought these Pilot Frixion Light highlighters without realizing they’re meant for Rocketbooks (which are pretty neat and I do have one, but I digress), but they’re also erasable on regular paper as well. So I can highlight the row I’m working on, then erase it when I’m done, then highlight the next row when I start it. One caveat though: it does tend to smudge the ink on the paper (it doesn’t matter how long it’s been dry; I printed out this pattern eons ago), but if you lightly erase the highlighter, it doesn’t smudge quite as much.

[doneknitting]

reminding myself that it's slip slip knit not drop slip knit