decrease

Heels yeah!

Hey all, I’m back and we’re about to finish our toe-up sock KAL! All that is left now is to put in the afterthought heel that we left room for before. There’s two very popular methods of putting in the heel, using short rows or just decreasing as you would for a toe. We’re going to look at using the toe decrease, as it’s a little easier. Once you get a little practice using this method you can practice your short rows and try that on the next pair. So you should have 2 socks (1 pair) that look […]

Knitting Interrupted …

Hiya … so if you’ve been reading my blog regularly, thank you, and I owe you an apology. I haven’t posted much this summer and I’m sorry. When I look back, there’s no real reason for it, and I’m not going to try and come up with one either. In truth, I have been a little scattered. Now I’m used to that in my knitting life, but not everywhere else. All I can do is persevere and try and not make it happen again. In order to do this, I’ll try and make my posts more regular – like […]

Let’s get started …

Okay, so I hope you’ve picked out a yarn and have done a swatch. You need to know your gauge (stitches and rows per inch), as I’ll explain how to customize this to your measurements along the way. Oh yeah, you’ll need the measurements for the person you’re making this for. So before we start, I should show you the original top and the one we’re going to make. Here’s a picture of the original one – yeah, it’s a good thing I’m a better knitter than sketch artist. Believe it or not, I can draw comic book characters […]

More HOLES than a dounut shop …

Well, hopefully now you’ve gotten the hang of putting some holes in your work. You should have noticed that by purling all the stitches on the reverse side, you give yourself the opportunity to close the holes and create the pattern. Then on the next row you have the option of offsetting those holes either to the right or left and/or continuing them vertically to create the desired effect. Although the main design element in lace knitting is done with the holes (yarn overs), the type of decrease, the direction of them, and where they are placed are integral […]

The wHOLE thing …

Okay, now that we have a basic idea of what Lace Knitting is about and we’ve selected our tools, it’s time to actually start something. We haven’t discussed casting on and off yet and we won’t need it right away. For the first few swatches we do, cast on the desired number of stitches with any method of your choice and then knit 4 rows of garter stitch. The firth row will be the start of the pattern (Row 1). You will knit 4 rows of garter stitch after your last row (you can do as many repeats of […]