Knitting Tips: Sizing Socks for Adults and Children

These charts can be used to determine the length of knitted/crocheted socks for particular sizes. You might want to increase the foot length by 1/2 inch or so to accommodate shrinking, growth, or snugness.

Men’s Sizes
Shoe size / Foot length

Women’s Sizes
Shoe Size / [...]

My Favorite Felted Mittens Pattern

This past winter, I knitted, felted and sold about 20 pairs of felted mittens at pre-holiday craft fairs. I don’t mind making socks on circular needles, but not mittens – guess the hole for the thumb bothers me, I dunno. Anyway, I use the 2-needle pattern below, but I make the mittens much [...]

Knitting Tips: Enough Yarn for One More Row?

Whenever I’m reaching the end of a skein, I always wonder if there’s enough yarn remaining to complete another row. Here’s a rule of thumb for that situation, from Creative Knitting:
Spread out your work, so you get the full width of the piece. With your remaining yarn, loosely extend it from one side to the [...]

Knitting Tips: Bobbins

I recently came across a suggestion that makes a lot of sense. When doing color knitting, managing as few as 2 different skeins of yarn gets to be a real pain. Bobbins help a lot, and the easiest bobbin tip I’ve found is free. Just save some of those little plastic closure thingies that come [...]

Knitting Tips: Toe of the Sock

I like to finish my socks with the 3-needle bind-off, but always had difficulty turning the sock inside out while still on the needles. Then I learned this nifty tip: Instead of trying to shove the toe and needles into the body of the sock, pull the cuff end through the toe hole and voila! [...]

Knitting Tips: Fix a Too-Long Sleeve without Frogging

There are few things more aggravating than finishing a sweater and discovering the sleeves are an inch, or 2, or 3, too long. All that knitting, all that seaming. Though still not fun, I recently figured out how to shorten the sleeves without taking everything apart.
Snip a stitch or two at the cuff. Good project [...]

Knitting Tips: Homemade “Green ” Sock Blockers

Need a little frame to air dry or photograph your hand knit socks? The ones I’ve seen in knitting stores cost $18 or more. It’s easy to make your own, out of something we all have around the house, a simple wire coat hanger. The kind that’s plastic or rubber coated works best as they [...]

Knitting Tips: Mattress Stitch tutorial video

Looking for a great way to seam that knitting together? Berroco has posted a great video on how to make invisible seams, and it couldn’t be easier. I’ve got myself a new technique!

more about “Berroco® Multimedia | Videos“, posted with vodpod

Knitting Tips: No-sew Circular Needle Holder

I knit almost everything on circulars, but like most knitters, find them a pain in the *** to store. So, I think this little thingy is ingenious! Requires 13 spools with 1/4 inch holes, floral wire, markers, scrap yarn or fabric, and glue. And only 15 or 20 minutes to assemble. From Jen at [...]

Knitting Tips: Casting on Rule of Thumb

Cast on, get it? (OK, sorry.)

Nothing is more aggravating than casting on using the long tail method and running out of yarn before you have the requisite number of stitches. As a general rule of thumb, you use 3 times the width of your project. For example, if your piece will measure 21″, use a [...]