#me@ my knitting

[anxiousangerball]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but

YOU DO NOT NEED TO START A NEW HOBBY!

STEP AWAY FROM THE TEXTILES!

YOU DON'T NEED MORE YARN!

THAT FABRIC IS NOT CALLING TO YOU! LEAVE IT ALONE!

[chubsthehamster]

Astraeus sweater!! Pattern by Bad Wolf Girl Studios. Knitted up with Malabrigo Arroyo, my absolute favorite yarn.

[noirandchocolate]

Several weeks ago one of my coworkers called me over into her cubicle and gave me a very unexpected gift. Her mother passed away recently, and she'd been packing stuff up at her condo to give to relatives and sell, so the home could be sold. The mother was an avid knitter and crocheter, and when my coworker came upon her stash of equipment, she told me, she "immediately thought of me as someone who might get some use out of it."

So, I have inherited a varied collection of knitting needles and crochet hooks, cable needles, sewing needles, and, best of all, now-out-of-print pattern books, mostly for blankets, because that was what this lady loved to make most. Plus, I also have a bunch of gauge swatches she made, pinned to little bits of card covered in perfect schoolteacher handwriting setting out the patterns they were made to test.

And also...

My coworker brought another bag, full of yarn and...knitted blanket squares. Her mother's last started project, before she got too sick to continue. And she asked if there was anything I could do with it.

It turned out, there are twelve completed squares, and I quickly located the pattern book they are from amid those given to me. It's a book of 60 patterns, meant to be put together however the maker wishes into blankets of 20 squares. I figured out which of the numbered patterns were already made, and selected eight more that I thought might go well with them.

So now! I am working on completing! My coworker's mother's last knitting project!

And I really am feeling very good about doing it.

[eleilinnrallin]

This is a reminder for those who handmake Christmas presents that now is not too early to start. It may in fact be a good time to start if you have a lot to make/your craft takes a long time. You should maybe start it now, whether that's brainstorming or actually doing the crafts!

[hotcinnamonsunset]

a whale of a good time🐋

[larkiethings]

LET THE CROSS STITCH HIT THE FLOOR

[markscherz]

Asking for all the fiber artists here, are you aware of the term "frogging" in fiber arts like knitting and crochet to mean "ripping out your work?" It's a pun on the sound a frog makes being ribbit because when you frog something you riiiip it rip it rippit. A lot of fiber artists themselves are unaware of this and their reactions to this knowledge range from exasperated sighs to utter delight.

[mochiwei]

Making a double-knit Zelda scarf pattern! 💗🧶

[andsewingishalfthebattle]

Novice sewing pattern: Cut out shapes. Line up the little triangles on the edges. Stitch edges together. We've also included step-by-step assembly instructions with illustrations.

Novice knitting pattern: yOU MUSt uNDerstANd thE SECret cOdE CO67 (73, 87, 93) BO44 (63, 76, 90) 28 (32, 34) slip first pw repeat 7x K to end *kl (pl) 42 * until 13" (13, 13, 15) join new at 30 pl for 17 rows ssk 27 k2tog mattress lengthwise BO and sacrifice a goat to the knitting gods. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANT "INSTRUCTIONS," I JUST GAVE THEM TO YOU

[clandestinegardenias]

The C(r)ozier Cowl (with pattern!)

I FINALLY DID IT, and I'm so incredibly pleased with how it turned out (it's also maybe the warmest scarf I've ever knit, the Terror costume design people knew what they were doing)

Details and pattern below the cut, along with more pics!

Details:

This infinite loop cowl is a knit recreation of the scarf/cowl worn by Captain Francis Crozier in the first season of the tv show The Terror (2018).

The choice of yarn is, in my opinion, very important to the accuracy of the result. The pattern is quite simple, so getting the right yarn makes a big impact. My suggested yarn is below.

This is knitted in seed stitch at a very tight gauge, using a worsted weight yarn on size 4 needles. This produces a gauge consistent with the scarf from the show (did I measure Jared Harris’ eye and use it to calculate gauge from a photo of Crozier wearing the scarf? MAYBE SO). It makes the knitting a little hard on the hands, but the resulting fabric is DELIGHTFUL—super dense, and since the cowl is knit as a tube it's double thick and, in my experience, nearly entirely windproof. THIS IS A VERY WARM COWL!

After looking at too many screenshots, I ultimately determined that the article in the show is in fact a scarf (you can see the edge VERY briefly in one shot). However, I have designed my version as a tube cowl, as it more easily reproduces the look of the article as worn in the show (doubled over and in a continuous loop around the neck with no edges visible). You could produce a scarf instead by knitting this flat instead of in the round—cast on the same number of stitches with a long tail cast on, and then only knit/repeat row 1 (consider adding a seldvege edge).

If you have questions or want tips, or just want to show me what you made, hit me up!! I’d love to chat.

Materials:

3 skeins (approx. 660 yards) Cascade 220 Heathers in color 2445 Shire (google it to find purchasing options, or ask your local yarn store to order it!)

Size 4 needles; either 16 inch circulars or double-pointed

Stitch marker

Yarn needle

Instructions:

Provisional CO 72 stitches on size 4 16-inch circular (or double pointed) needles to work in the round. Place marker.

Row 1: k1 p1

Row 2: p1 k1

Repeat until cowl measures approximately 54 inches (4.5 feet; 137 cm) or desired length.

Unpick provisional cast-on, placing live stitches on any spare circular needles or dpns. Kitchener stitch ends together (tutorial for doing so in pattern here).

Wear as a single or double loop.

Now go have some glorious homoerotic tension with your second in command!

[ancient-art-of-craft]

Quilter's Dilemma

A phenomenon I made up where you have a talent that takes so much time to produce something, that you can't sell it anymore. There's a market for handmade quilts, obviously, they're beautiful and warm and wonderful, but no one would be willing to pay the amount of money that is required to properly compensate the artist.

I don't quilt, but the raw materials to make a couple of pairs of mittens is $70 for some nice wool. But the hours required to make them is roughly two seasons of Criminal Minds, and some Doctor Who episodes with my family. Those are 45 minute episodes. Minimum wage in my state is around $11.

No one is willing to pay several hundred dollars for a couple of pairs of mittens, no matter how warm and detailed they are. Especially if I'm not a master knitter, which I'm not, and they're bound to have mistakes in them.

So we loop back around to giving them as gifts, and instead ask nothing in return.

If someone gives you something they handmade this Christmas, cherish it.

[exercise-of-trust]

i don't generally bother posting the stuff i knit exactly from existing patterns but i finally wove in the ends on a couple frankensteined socks and figured i might as well throw them up here? they're very dumb but i'm fond of them.

for the first pair i made up a colorwork pattern for the feanorian heraldic symbol, and slapped it together with the pisqu sock structure and toe pattern, and a snippet of a mitten for the sole halves. the yarn is 100g of jamieson's of shetland that i got on the high street of fort william, as a treat after walking 100 miles from glasgow to get there, and i had... maybe 10 yards total left over? i had to cut off the long tail from my cast-on and use it to graft the toe closed on the last sock; it was nerve-wracking. if i did this pattern again, i'd probably put the toe motif in between the two heraldic lozenges, but the first time through i wasn't sure how the math would work out so i frontloaded them. ah well!

the second pair is the structure of an existing sock i've forgotten the name of (worked in the round from the tip of the heel to a hat-like shape with six sides; two opposite ones are grafted together to form the instep and the other sets of two open into the cuff and close into the toe), with the colorwork pattern from the gogink sweater yoke. i thiiiink you could do this with basically any colorwork sweater yoke, but i've only tried it with this one. if i did it again i'd add some short rows to the front side of the cuff; the construction sort of pulls it down so that the heel side of the cuff is higher than the front, and a couple short row rounds would probably level it back out. i like these because they neatly smash the cuff-down/toe-up binary and make everybody mad, and i am at all times an imp of the perverse.

[valcove]

Life tip:

Doing fiber arts in a library may attract the librarians to you. This will be a positive interaction.

[carrie-tate]

Being a Time Lord and not needing sleep has its perks...

For example, the ability to not let your favorite companion in adventures sleep an extra half hour

[julienbakerstreet]

finally posting my handknit snoopylock sweater for sherlock holmes’s 171st birthday!

[hotcinnamonsunset]

🎣lure me in, baby!