Welcome to New Knitters, All Knitters, Male Knitters, and BTW, Try The Portuguese Knitting Style
September 19, 2009 | 
Author Hello! My aim with this blog is to share useful tips and discoveries I make as I learn more and more about knitting. I’m a guy, so I urge guys to knit and everyone to nudge the men they know to learn to knit.
May I recommend you browse for articles in the SITE MAP tab above. It’s the easiest way to get the most out of this site.
And if you like what you see, remember to SIGN UP for updates in the box in the right column. You will get an email when I post a new article.
Especially for anyone who thinks knitting is hard, please try the Portuguese knitting method. It’s easy to master and fast. When I get going I can do a stitch a second. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Portuguese Knitting, Techniques | 
Tags: knitting pendant, portugal, Portuguese Knitting | 
3 Comments »
Organize Your Needles with My Needle Keeper Idea
I have lots of straight knitting needles, and a few bent ones. Keeping track of the mates for them was hard for a while, as I didn’t have a needle organizer. I was going to make one, but I never bothered enough to find a good pattern. Being a cheap yankee and a compulsively creative sort I came up with these little gems. They keep needle sets together in pairs or sets of pairs. If I just want to take one pair with me, the individual keepers keep them together in my bag.
When you are using the needles you can leave the Keeper on one of the needles (for individual Keepers).
Use your imagination. I just made these up.
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Posted in Projects, Uncategorized | Tags: crochet, crochet projects, Knitting, knitting needles, needle keepers, needle organizers | No Comments »
Herringbone Stitch for Portuguese Style Knitting
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Understanding Eastern Knitting and Western Knitting Styles and Knitting Faster
Understanding Eastern Knitting and Western Knitting Styles and Knitting Fast
In this article I will explain the difference between the Eastern and Western styles of knitting and how not to get confused. There will be some instruction in how to do them, yet while this is not so much a knitting lesson, what you learn here may be of great use to the beginner or transitioner. Read the rest of this entry »
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Fast Knit Hat with Easy Faux Cables – Free Pattern
I am making for a relative – to match the scarf I made for xmas last year – has faux 1+1 cables.
Faux cables like in this hat are very easy, don’t require a cable needle or finger contortions, and best of all they don’t tighten your knitting significantly like real cables, so they are great for hats and socks where fit is important and you want a bit of fancy stitching. Real cables would make your hat a lot smaller due to the pulling it you get with real cable stitches. Read the rest of this entry »
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Fast Knit “Manly” Geometric Hat and Scarf but She Likes It, Too – Free Pattern
This is easy and relatively fast to knit and looks good on both sides, so it’s basically reversible. When I finished the scarf (at work) a couple of people wanted one, including women, so it’s not just for men. I designed it for a male friend of mine and he clearly liked it. The pattern deters curling edges, and the extra thick yarn and simple pattern makes it fast to knit. I used Lion Brand Woolease Thick and Quick in Charcoal color.
The pattern is a geometric grid that has narrow parts alternating with wider parts, both vertically and horizontally. I if you know something about knitting you can use this as a basis for other designs with this thickness yarn. I am using it to do some cabled hats for gifts to match scarves I made last year. Be aware that cables pull in more side to side and make a piece a little smaller.
This hat I designed to go with the scarf fits me “not tight” and I have a large head and almost covers my ears. If you need a hat smaller, take out 8 stitches around leaving 48 loops for a smaller hat, and remove 5-8 rows for a shorter hat.
For a variation of this hat with faux cables see the picture and link below. It looks nice also.
Materials and tools:
Scarf: 10.5 straight needles.
Yarn: two skeins Lion Brand Woolease Thick and Quick (106 yd/97 m), or equivalent size 6 yarn.
Hat: 10.5 circular needles, 24 -36 inch length or whatever works for you.
Yarn: Less than one skein of the above selected yarn.
7 or 8 stitch markers. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Patterns | Tags: hat, knit, knitted hat, Knitting, Lion Brand, man's hat, man's scarf, scarf, Thick and Quick | No Comments »
Register for Updates
For the last month or two I have been getting lots of spam subscriptions to the posts on this web site. In the course of a day I get 20 or more junk registrations for updates, which I have to manually delete.
If you would like to register for normal updates by email please use the Contact Eric page and include the user name, email and password you would like to use and I will register you myself.
OR
I suggest you use RSS and get updates via a newsreader. It’s very easy to use. On the right side of this page at the edge of the window you see a floating tab with an orange icon. Click that and you will be led to subscribe to updates to the blog. You can collect the updates in your gmail account or use newsreader applications built into your browser, or other programs or web sites that support this.
If anyone has an idea how to stop these spam registrations I’m all ears. I have tried captcha, but judging by the time stamp on the registrations they are being done manually, by a human, every few minutes.
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Moved to a New Web Host
I know you haven’t seen anything new here in a while. I’ve been working on other things that need more attention. I have just moved this site to a new host that is much faster. I was on Godaddy but their servers are very slow compared to Hostgator, and they were not able to help make them faster, so, end of story, end of Godaddy for me. This site is so much faster now, especially the back end where I work mostly. I hope you like it.
I do have a few things to post about here for knitting, but not feeling too motivated. If you have anything you want to hear from me about, let me know. I respond well to such interest. Have a great day. – Eric
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The ‘How Many…?’ Knitting Tool
I found this online tool for planning a knitted piece. I hope it helps you. Uses:
- If I want to decrease 14 stitches over 6 inches – how many rows should I work between decreases?
- My pattern needs me to increase 13 stitches evenly over a row – how often do I increase?
- I want to knit something 13 inches wide – how many stitches do I cast on?
- I want to knit a piece 22.5 inches long – how many rows do I work?
http://quirm.net/blog-extra/how-many/
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All Slip Cable Knitting Technique.
Hello, I came across this blog from a Ravelry thread and now I’ve got it bookmarked!
I learned to cable a few months ago for a project that only involved very small cables, but many of them. I quickly decided I’d go mad if I had to use a cable needle every five stitches, so I looked up how to cable without a needle. Like you probably were, I was quickly terrified at the thought of dropping stitches, so I figured out my own way which is and expansion of some things I’ve read elsewhere.
By slipping various groups of stitches back and forth, you can transpose the two sets of stitches before you ever knit them, and you never need to take a stitch completely off the needle. Say you want to do a left twist in a four-stitch-wide cable. You slip two stitches together to the right needle (always knitwise), slip two more stitches together, then slip all four stitches back. If you want a right twist, slip all four first and then do the pairs. Obviously this becomes more awkward for wider cables, but it’s far preferable to any of the alternatives, for me.
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Make Felted Bulky Yarn Yourself
Do you have some worsted weight or other yarn you aren’t crazy about, or don’t want to use for projects at that yarn weight? You can convert it to a bulky or super bulky yarn with a bit of elbow grease. Combine colors along the full length or create colorways as you go along, or just make one color, and the yarn will have new characteristics for unique projects.
While fiddling around with yarn I needed some matching cord for a knitted/fulled/felted sporran I was making for my kilt so I took some of the same fishermans yarn by Lion Brand and crocheted up about five feet of chain in this yarn, then went to work felting it in a sink full of hot soapy water, just rubbing it all in a ball and every half minute or so pulling it all apart so the strand didn’t felt onto itself. After about five minutes the squishiness of the yarn mass pretty much disappeared, indicating the felting/fulling had pretty much completed. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Techniques | Tags: bulky yarn, crochet, felt, felted, felted projects, felted yarn, fulling, how to make felted yarn, kilt, knitted cord, Knitting, make your own sporran, make your own yarn, scotland, spinning, sporran, super bulky yarn | No Comments »
