Monthly Archives: November 2011

An unofficial survey (with a giveaway!)

Thanks for all of your suggestions!  Comments are now closed – we’ll announce the winners soon!


Over the past couple years,  I would say that the majority of my personal knitting projects are from downloaded patterns. The popularity of downloadable patterns has been growing every year – for instance, we have almost 1400 patterns in our Independent Designers program, not to mention our popular in-house designs, free patterns, eBooks and book patterns available for download as well.

I get requests from the IDP designers a lot, asking me what kind of patterns they should be working on.  Well, we know what we like & what we think would be popular with our customers but I thought I’d ask our blog readers – what kind of patterns would you like to see more of?  Sweaters? Socks? Hats? Easy patterns?  Challenging patterns?  Leave a comment below & let us know!

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Advanced Cabling Techniques: Multiple Crossing Cables Video

In keeping with the theme of last week’s Race to Wrapped, this week’s video tutorial continues our exploration of cables! Since we focused on introducing simple cables and twists to new knitters last week, we thought it might be fun to do an entire series that shows off unique and interesting cables for more advanced knitters.

Check out part 1 of our Advanced Cabling Techniques video series, which shows you how to create multiple crossing cables! These unique cables have a three dimensional appearance that makes it look as though you are creating interlocking rings.

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In Brief Praise of Ugliness

With my clothing, I rarely venture outside dark colors and
neutrals. The most thrilling sweater I own is in a shade of cranberry.
However, that doesn’t prevent me from using color in the projects I crochet;
lots of color and all of it at once.

The lion’s share of my handiwork is cheerfully ugly, the
natural conclusion of higher gauges, a bird-like level concentration
and all that aforementioned use of color. If a project goes as planned, it’s so
delightfully unattractive that I’m pleased and repulsed in equal measure!

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