Tips and tricks

Until recently, I never paid much attention to the knitting toe-up socks vs. cuff-down socks debate. When I decided to learn to knit toe-up socks …

I’ve been knitting socks for 13 years, but I have never successfully completed a pair of toe up-socks. To be more precise, I have never …

There’s a lot of confusion in the knitting world about the differences and similarities between tech editing and test knitting. Some people use the terms …

My first year growing roses, I noticed something strange: as we reached the end of the season, a white rose of mine had turned pink.

You don’t need to spend tons of money on your software to design effective, elegant knitting patterns. Here are three inexpensive alternatives to a pricey Adobe suite.

But lately, I’ve seen some patterns try to take a shortcut on sizing by just advising knitters to increase or decrease their gauge to make a larger or smaller size. I’m not talking about patterns where there is an entire carefully plotted grid of different stitch and row counts to allow people to knit the same design in several different gauges and do it well. I’m talking about sock patterns that say things like, “to make a larger size, just go up one needle size.”

I think that’s a bad idea. Here’s why.

Sometimes, roses just don’t bloom. You change their fertilizer, give them more or less water, try other mysterious tricks you’ve read about, but nothing. When that happens, the only solution might be time.

This post will explain how to pick the yarn and needles you want to start knitting with, and at the end, there is a link to a series of videos that will teach you how to start your knit project, grow it, and finish it.

Recently, I got to thinking about the role of blocking in a knitter’s life. Here’s my love letter to one of the most useful tools in a knitter’s toolbox.

If there’s one rule for living well that I’ve really bought into, it’s this: use the good stuff. Wear the nice jewelry, pull out grandma’s …