This page is home to the knitting tips and tricks that knitters in our virtual community came up with while looking for solutions to deal with various knitting situations.
If you have a tip that you’d like to share with other knitters, please, describe it in the “Comment” field. Thank you!
~ Maryna
P.S. To avoid inappropriate comments and spam, I’ll approve each posting before it appears here, so please don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t show on this page right away.
Trying to work a repeating pattern in a dark colour yarn, I discovered a real help. I took a length of contrasting scrap yarn and interwove it between each pattern repeat, making it so much easier to recognize any glitches that might happen. That is, I placed the contrasting yarn scrap between the last stitch of the pattern and the first stitch of the next pattern. The scrap was long enough for me to continue weaving for several pattern repeats before having to pull the scrap up to repeat the process. What a help that was to these old eyes. My suggestion is to use at least a two-foot length of scrap yarn.
I don’t know if others have had problems with buying patterns in digital form being in a separate pdf pages, but if they have I just found a site (smallpdf.com) that will let you combine several pdf files free twice a day. I found this to be extremely helpful rather than 4 pdf pages for my knitting pattern.
Hi Liat,
I needed a method of re-winding a larger amount of yarn than I could neatly wrap around my fingers. A friend showed me a way of winding yarn using the small diameter firm cardboard centre of a roll of aluminum foil (about 1” diameter).
Using sharp scissors I cut a slit about1-1 1/2” long in one end of the tube to secure the yarn.
To split a ball of yarn to knit two at a time from the same original ball of yarn….find the centre of the ball end of the yarn….secure the end in the slit at 5he end of the tube. Wrap the yarn evenly and firmly secure around the tube…like a spool of thread.
Depending how much yarn you hope to re-wind …I usually start with a 2-3 “ long wrap then wrap over the yarn neatly as possible for 2-3 even layers then push each end of the wrapped yarn together( it gives a more obvious ‘edge’ to the wrapped yarn.
Then holding the yarn securely over the edge of the layered yarn, wrap the yarn from the main ball of yarn slightly diagonally, at the edge of the original 2-3 layers of wrapped yarn .At the same time turn the tube with each wrap to slightly overlap the previous rounds.
When Inhave wrapped enough yarn I wrap around the middle of the new ‘ball’ 3-4 times and secure the now cut end underneath it with a loop. I leave this in place as I use the yarn. Knitting from the ‘centre pull’ I had secured in the tube. Carefully twist and remove the tube to be re-used later..
This can be used for several yards of yarn or half a giant ball.
I hope others find this as helpful as I did!
Happy knitting!
K. McD
I only use one little trick that might be useful for other knitters in your group:
While I have stuck to the “classic” continental way to purl, I use your Russian method in lace knitting on the wrong side of the work every time when there will be a left leaning decrease in the following row. This way I can just knit the 2 stitches together through the back loop. It’s not much of a difference but when you have a lot of those decreases in a pattern it soon adds up.
Of course I have to look at my chart carefully to see which stitches are affected. Also, I may not be the only one to have thought of this!!