Knitting Challenges

This year I’ve been trying to challenge myself with my knitting. With more complex patterns come questions. When you’re in this predicament, the internet becomes your friend. Not only is Google & YouTube a complete guide to all things knitting, Twitter brings forth a wealth of information. Here’s a round up of my recent online discoveries.

For the Bunny Nuggets I needed to knit a three needle bind off. Having no clue what this meant, I googled it & came across this video on YouTube by Planet Purl. Using YouTube can be great as you can pause it & replay things as many times as you want. Also, I find it really helpful to see what the person is talking about. Reading about it often doesn’t make much sense.

I’m in the process of knitting the second in a pair of socks. The pattern asked me to ‘ssk’. No idea what this meant, hello Google! This description from Knitting Help came up. I liked the way it used a picture showing the difference between ssk & decreasing and it really helped me with the heel.

When I was thinking about knitting phone covers, I wanted to knit my own pattern. Having used cable before, I wanted to try it out again. Margaret at my knitting group showed me how when I was knitting my hat, but I wanted to check if I used the same method. I came across the Learn 2 Knit website & read through their cable knitting instructions. It was clear with good diagrams to show how to do the stitch.

I really like to have a go at almost anything, knitting wise, as it is such a good way of learning new techniques. So when I was knitting a bike lock cover I needed to know how many stitches to cast on. The lovely KnitLoveErron helped me work out how many stitches I needed, but first I had to work out the gauge. Now I freely admit that I’ve never worked out gauge before so thankfully google helped me out & led me to About Knitting.com. Between us, the cover was a success!

My final tip is something I found on knitting for dummies on YouTube. How to pick up a dropped stitch. This has saved my bacon a number of times. The video is nice and clear, and covers both knit & purl stitch.

Asking for help on Twitter is always a sure fire way of finding things out. Many people will answer or at the very least retweet. I’ve taken pictures of patterns before now & there’s always someone helpful out there to put you on the right path.

I’d love it if you had any great online knitting help. If you do, add them as a comment below. Thanks! x