Free online knitting patterns

circular knitting

nadina — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:44:05 +0000

I’ve made tons of hats on circulars. I start at the lower edge with a 16 inch circular, when I decrease so that there are to few stitches to continue I switch to double pointed needles the same size. I use a size seven for worsted weight. You can go down to only about 16-20 stitches before having to switch over to the dpn.
Note: When making hats in the round at some point of decreases you have to change to double pointed needles. I usually don’t even bother with the circular just do the whole thing on D.P. needles. I find it much easier to connect 1st row without twisting. Hope this helps!

My knitting has been very hit or miss …

nadina — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:40:49 +0000

It’s been rather quiet lately…My knitting has been very hit or miss lately, with mostly misses, but I’m sure that happens even to the best of us. Though I am the sort who prefers to have just one project going at a time, I’ve been allowing myself to be distracted & start whatever I want: so the list of semi-active projects has become quite long, and each has its own special issue: the socks are very slow going, because I’m beginning to realize that I just don’t like variegated yarns that much; the sweater may become a shawl because of the variegated yarn I am using, while some wool is whispering from the stash that it might just make a nice sweater instead…As with any craft, some parts get easier with practice and some bits are never relaxing (these are the parts I don’t do anymore…) because I am doing this for fun…

Keeping notes on projects

nadina — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 11:48:58 +0000

Here’s what I do:
Punch a hole in an index card, attach it to the work [or skein, if it
won’t interfere] with a coilless safety pin. Add more if needed. Now
all you have to do is worry about the pen.

knitted on edgings?

nadina — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 12:37:54 +0000

Here’s a little program that lets you create your own graph paper (you set vertical lines per inch & horizontal lines per page). You’d have to do a guage swatch & measure your rows & stitches & do some math. I’d use this if you can’t find the knitters graph paper :

it’s at: http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?500000008486 you need winzip to undo it.

I personally dislike fringe, so I wanted to add an edging instead to the stole I am making now. I have the idea in my head that there is a way to do a provisional cast on, and then go back & somehow pick up the stitches as you go along and knit an edging perpendicular to the cast on. Well, yes, edgings can be done this way. But I wouldn’t use a provisional cast-on unless I were going to pick up all the stitches from the cast-on and work down. In this case, I would use a method similar to that used in applied I-cord: work my edging to the last 2 sts, k (or p) 2 tog, k 1 stitch from the finished edge. The long-tail cast-on base stitches will be fine. I prefer knitted-in edgings because there’s less opportunity for error. You can ease the edging in as you go and it’s much more accurate. If you attach edgings, yes you should pin them in and mattress-stitch them in place. AND you are going to have to guesstimate how much edging you’ll be needing and not bind the stitches off in case you discover at the end you have knit too little…

yarn types that the patterns would work well in

nadina — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:05:11 +0000

I suggest that chenille “hides” the garter stitch effect nicely…You are getting a good knitting education in using a non wool fiber. You will reach new heights in your knitting career by making these items look good by a very gentle pressing/ and blocking.
I know not all can use wool in their items due to personal circumstances, but its a lovely fiber to work w/ and block, especially in shawls. Its my personal favorite as a fiber for many things, especially shawls.The only fiber that I have had a lot trouble w/ is chenille. I wish it was an easier fiber to work w/, for its a glamous looking fabric

I like wool because it keeps me warm and I am always cold…I don’t find silk to be as warm. You can adjust the amount of warmth by how loosely the shawl is made…one on big stitches will give you more circulation.

Are you looking for warmth or just a light cover-up…and, by the way, once you make a shawl…you could get hooked!

hints for how to tell if a yarn is going to tend to split

nadina — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 22:39:40 +0000

BEFORE you knit with it…
Take a bit of the yarn between your fingers of both hands, pull, tug and twist it a little. Then push it back against itself (about half inch will do). If the threads in the twist fall all apart ittjust might split while you are working with it.

Just knit with what you like. But on the other hand, if you plan on frogging alot (ripping out your knitting), I’d probably wouldn’t use it just for convenience sake. You can untwist the yarn while you are knitting, frogging, knitting, frogging, knitting, etc.

What you really need to watch out for is that slippery stuff. You haven’t knit yet till you try to keep some of that slippery stuff on your metal needles. LOL It’s impossible! You havent knit yet you will try to combine the yarn with something else or try and use wooden needles. I pass this tip on from experience.

Good luck!

weaving in ends for wool/acrylic fibers

nadina — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:16:57 +0000

Are you knitting with acrylics, or with wool? wool fibres tend to stick to themselves just by their nature…
So, for acrylic fibers: Knitting the two ends together should be sufficient to lock in those
new balls of yarn, but if you would feel more secure, weave the ends
in for a few stitches horizontally thru your knit stitches. You can
even take a stitch or two back then along the row below if you want.
For wool fibers (I am working with right now):
I’ve attached ball o’ yarn #6 to my shole. This thing is starting to wear on me, so I thought maybe I’d stop & take care of the ends I have hanging everywhere…When I joined each new ball, I knitted or purled holding the old yarn and new yarn together for 3-5 stitches, whatever the pattern would allow (I had decided it wouldn’t be good to do this near any yo’s)…
I weave my ends in the direction I think they will be least visible…If you
are working with wool, the fact that you have already knit them together for
a few stitches should be close to enough…the wooliness with cause them to
stay attached after you have washed and blocked..

healthy fiber animals

nadina — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:02:46 +0000

If you’ve raised livestock for very long you learn that most animals who are not healthy, die and the issue stops there. The old farmers never ate sick animals, those got hauled away/burned/buried. An injured animal that wasn’t drugged is safe to be butchered, but the degree of injury would affect adrenaline and likelihood of toughness, thus the decision would have to be made carefully and that animal might be best as dog food.

You also learn that healthy animals are grown on healthy land where they are rotated regularly to clean pastures. The individual farmer/rancher can’t afford to keep sick animals around and knows how and when to properly dispose of them.

Now the stark contrast here is the feedlot situation or chicken house situation where factory models are applied to livestock. Those are where you have diseased animals put into the food chain, not the private owners, it’s the corporate owners who aren’t actually onsite lovingly caring for all those unhealthily forcefed and drugged animals. Plenty of anonymous workers have reported illegal drug use in those animals, tipping off of when inspectors would be there, etc… The chicken house cleaning causes disabilities among the workers due to the chemicals used, fecal contamination abounds from mechanical evisceration.

You make your choice of which model to support every time you eat and I’m not advocating vegetarianism at all here. I’m advocating supporting local fibers, local foods, and building relationships with your neighbors that create trust and concern for wellbeing for everyone.

Trying to control everyone when the offenders are the corporate factory farms is just shear stupidity, because we all lose when the price of meat is too high for people to be well nourished and the cost of natural fibers goes up because the small guy who does the best job at raising good fleece and healthy animals can’t afford to keep up with govt. red tape.

Disease fear mongering is also part of the media/mind control and pharmaceutical marketing campains. Choose healthy foods and turn off that steady barage of commercials that tell you there’s a pill for everything, and this is less of an issue.

We don’t need to spend more taxpayer money just to lose more rights to LIFE and animal ownership!

This weekend I did frame my swatches

nadina — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 09:48:43 +0000

- they came out beautifully! In case anyone is interested, I bought some cheap wooden picture frames, some cheap mats, and double stick tape. Stuck white paper over the cardboard backing in the frame, stuck the blocked swatch onto the paper with
the double stick tape, threw it in the frame under the mat & voila! So easy to
coordinate with your room!
And a question: when you are going to attach things together, do you block
them first? A resounding YES!!!!!!! One should block before assembling the pieces
together.

Rip-O-Rama

nadina — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:23:43 +0000

Oh yeah. You never stop ripping no matter how good you THINK you are. I’ve
been ripping out for too many years. I almost never
take the work off the needles unless the mistake is so egregious, I have no
choice. But when I do rip each stitch out, rather than pull the yarn out of
the old stitch each time, I do an entire row (round) and then gently pull
the ripped yarn.

Btw, if you really want a frogging challenge, there’s ripping out from point
A only the stitches where lies the mistake and then reknitting them back up
to point A, leaving the rest of the knitting as is. This works extremely
well for mistakes in cables, for example. Like when you should have twisted
the cable one way and did it wrong and only noticed it about 10 twists later
. You’d simply rip out the cable stitches and reknit and twist them
using either a crochet hook or a dp. Not hard at all, just takes a little
nerve.

Btw: fixing missed yarnovers: If you miss a yarnover and catch it the next row, just pick up the running thread between the stitches and go on. Don’t twist it when you pick it up. Just scoop and knit. It will be a little smaller than
“normal” but once it is blocked no one will notice!