Hello and welcome to another installment of Tuesday’s Tips – where I try and make your knitting experience “knot” so painful. Yeah, that’s bad but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see it in the Friday Funnies ;-). So this week all the tips are about pushing your boundaries a bit – learning new things. Some of these tips can transition over into other parts of your life as well. Here we go.
- Get a Library Card – I know that’s not a knitting tip (or it doesn’t seem like one), but it really is. If you really want to expand your knitting ability, you have to do some homework. Yes, doing different patterns are great, but you need to go beyond that. Learning techniques takes practice and you don’t get that from patterns. At your library, you’ll find books that are about techniques, not just patterns. You can borrow them for free, practice the techniques (by making lots of swatches), then implement them in your future projects.
- Use those swatches – Last week I gave you a tip about knitting the swatches on the inside of sweaters to be used later in case mending is needed. From the tip above, you’ll get swatches that weren’t part of a sweater project. You can use these swatches for things like mosaic scarves, blankets, dishcloths, or whatever. For the scarves or blankets, you can also practice crochet skills to put the swatches together (another 2-in-1 tip).
- Make mini-sweaters – Sometimes the pattern looks great, but you don’t want to spend a lot of time making it to realize that you don’t like it, or the drape is wrong, or whatever. Well, the answer is to make mini-sweaters. If you’re not comfortable or able to reduce a pattern to a suitable size, try taking a percentage of all the figures and go from there. It doesn’t have to be perfect because this is just to give you a visual of the overall look. If it is, well you have a sweater you can give to someone that it does fit!
- Read 1 new pattern per week – It’s a good idea to learn what’s out there by reading at least one new pattern every week. You don’t have to make it, just read through the pattern as if you were going to. That means highlighting the size you would make and making sure you understand (or think you do) all of the instructions. If you don’t understand something, look it up or ask someone who might. This will also help you to understand the terminology and the differences in the writing styles better.
- Start a Knitting Library – Start a library (2 of them) of knitting. The first is going to be of all the swatches you make. You can categorize them however you wish, but do it in a way that you can easily find whichever you’re looking for. The second is of all the knitting books and magazines you have. In the beginning you can put them all the magazines in the same holder, but as your library grows, you will want to sort them by title or another method to your liking.
- Experiment – There’s lots of information on the internet about which technique to use for a particular thing, or which type of needle to use for which fiber, but in the end it’s what’s best for you. Yes, there are some instances where specifics should stay together, but for the most part you can mix and match things in a lot of different ways. Try a few things you don’t usually do. You may come up with a new favorite!
Next week we’ll go back to more traditional knitting tips, but hopefully something here this week will catch your attention and you’ll try it. If you’ve learned even just one new thing then I’m a happy knitter.
Hugzzz 😎