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How to Make Knitting and Crocheting Easier
Use these 5 steps to progress in your knitting or crocheting hobby, and learn how to get the most out of the experience.
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#FixingFiberFeb
One of the benefits of making your own accessories and/or garments is that you can fix them if something happens. One of the downsides of making your own accessories and/or garments is that you have to fix them if something happens. So far I have only made 1 repair of a knitted object, and that was a blanket I made for my grandma. I’ve avoided fixing a number of items that were made for me. My mending pile currently has 3 items in it: Moonstone Mittens, whose thumbs came undone Droplets sweater, which has a couple very noticeable ladders on one sleeve My Beginner Raglan, whose armpit came loose on…
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Our Maker Life – Calgary 2019
What. A. Weekend. There is so much that goes on over this event weekend and there are so many people involved. The organizing team, plus some locals, like Chantal of Knitatude, provided a great base for meeting tons of people and having lots of opportunities to interact. I wish I had more pictures, and I wish the pictures I do have were better. Apparently my camera hates artificial light, especially in selfie mode. As Our Maker Life approached, I found I was getting nervous. Would it be as good as I’d hoped? Would I like the people I was meeting? Would I be able to get out of my shell…
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Trust the Pattern
Don’t Make These Mistakes When Reading a Pattern If you are making something from a pattern just for fun – this post applies to you. There is a major exception to this rule that I will put at the bottom of this post. I am quite deferential to pattern designers when I am knitting. I give them tremendous benefit of the doubt for many things. This is because I assume that they: Have some knowledge Went through their own trial and error process as they designed Had their pattern edited and/or tested Sometimes these are very good assumptions to make. There is so much that I don’t know about knitting,…
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Selfish Making
I hate this phrase, for me usually heard as “Selfish Knitting”. It’s just that I have a strong negative association with the word selfish. And according to Merriam-Webster, I’m right: concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself : seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others arising from concern with one’s own welfare or advantage in disregard of others This post isn’t an attempt at trying to get us to stop using these kinds of phrases, after all, it is pretty ingrained in the making community. But I think that even though it can just be a turn of phrase, sometimes there actually is guilt makers feel…
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On Repeat
As previously mentioned, there are a million patterns out there. While of course you probably don’t want to make all of them, there are probably a lot of them you do want to make. This means that there is just no reason to ever make the same pattern twice. I know there are people out there who make something, and love it so much that they immediately make another. I heard of a fellow tester making 4 pairs of English Garden Reading Socks in a month. And during the My Beginner Raglan KAL there were many people who finished this super fast pattern and immediately started another one. This is just…
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Support a Fellow Maker / Take a Break from Designing
If you know me at all, there’s a good chance you’ve heard my thoughts about the volume of patterns being put out by designers. So this post is partially selfish in a desire to spread my beliefs, but also aiming to give some thoughts on how designers can improve. In my perfect world, all designers would have to take a year off from designing, and only make other designers’ patterns (#takeabreaktobebetter). I know that designers have a million ideas in their heads. All those ideas are lined up, just waiting to go either from head or paper to yarn. But I would imagine that sometimes those ideas may be lacking…
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Take a Class
If you’ve been following along on Instagram, you know that I just finished taking a class at STASH Lounge here in Calgary to learn how to make thrummed mittens. I first took a knitting class 3 years ago because my mom wanted to take a knitting class with her daughters. So for her birthday we signed up for the Learn to Knit class at STASH. Pretty much all 3 of us knew how to knit, my mom had re-taught me to knit as a teenager after her mom had taught me as a child. But my mom wanted a refresher. Now this is going to sound pretty dramatic, but this class…
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Fibre Fairs
If you saw my Instagram stories, you know last weekend, while much of the knitting world was at Rhinebeck, Calgary was having the fall edition of Fibre Shindig. (P.S. Fibre is the Canadian/French way of spelling fiber). This was the 3rd time I’ve gone, and without question, it’s the most yarn I’ve ever bought at once. BUT, I actually have a plan for all the yarn I got. And because Fibre Fairs are scheduled, you can plan for the spending you may do, and use something like my Yarn Savings Plan. I know the ‘Rhinebeck Sweater’ is a really big deal, but Fibre Fairs in general are a great place…
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The K/CAL: Designer Edition
I used to wonder what the point of running a K/CALs was. Having been part of one now I have seen how for many makers, especially those newer to their craft, it can be tremendously helpful. But I think the benefits of running a K/CAL may be even greater for a designer. While I am not a designer and haven’t run my own K/CAL, there are a number of benefits I’ve perceived through observation of designers running a K/CAL for one of their own patterns: Sell a bunch of patterns – Since it’s necessary to have the pattern to participate in a K/CAL they’ll be paying your shop…
