Sunday, April 18, 2010

18 April 2010

Safety lines. And you thought those were what mountain climbers used.

Safety lines are commonly used by lace knitters. It is a piece of thread that is run through all of the stitches on your needle every so many rows. If a mistake is discovered you only need to ravel to the safety line and place all of those stitches back on the needle - mistake free.

You don't need to be working on lace to use safety lines. Any knitting that has a complicated pattern can use a safety line. Just run a contrasting thread (using a tapestry needle) through the stitches on your needle. How often? Well, how much do you want to ravel if you make a mistake?
Every five or ten rows or one pattern repeat will do. Whatever you feel comfortable with.

Now, no raveling back in tears for many rows until you can figure where you are in your pattern.

Friday, April 16, 2010

16 April 2010

I have helped customers with yarn overs (YO) for many years. For the most part yarn overs self-explanatory and easy to show. A yarn over is an increase and the purpose is to create a hole (eyelet) in your knitting.

The problem arises when your pattern asks you to start a row of knitting with a yarn over. You sit there wondering how this can be accomplished.

Simple. The yarn over is the first stitch on the right-hand needle. Don't try to put the yarn over on the left-hand needle and attempt to move it across to the right. Depending on whether the next stitch to be worked is a purl or a knit will cause you to have to wrap the yarn so that it either ends up on the front of the work or back of the work ready to work a knit or a purl.

See, simple.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

8 April 2010

You really need to consider yarn amounts when changing from stockinette stitch to garter stitch (or from knit to crochet).

It takes three rows of garter stitch to equal two rows of stockinette. Put in other words, it takes one-third more yarn to knit in garter than it does to knit stockinette.

This one-third more can be applied to afghans/throws too. If you have a pattern for a knitted throw and you want to make the same size but you are going to crochet it, it will use one-third more yarn than is called for in the knitted version.