Follow along and discover your next inspiration as we cast on for projects we love, explore new techniques, and dish about the latest and greatest from Knit Picks.
Meet the team »
I’ve been hit with SOCK FEVER! I loved doing the color maps for the new Stroll Handpainted
yarns and couldn’t wait to start knitting socks with the pretty skeins
when they arrived at the office a few months ago. I grabbed a skein of
Leg Warmer and knit my very first toe-up, two-at-a-time socks!
There’s nothing better than finishing a long-term project. And for me,
that’s most of them – but they’re not all knitting! This past week has
been spent in the garden, reaping the rewards of the last year’s work. 
But of course that’s not all – I finally wove in the ends on my little Chroma sweater!
Read more »I’m comepletly in love with one of our newest kits.
This gorgeous shawlette is the Dorothy Shawl, designed by Kristen Hanley Cardozo, who is one of my favorite designers. She has been a part of the IDP program for quite a while now and while I always want to knit her patterns, Dorothy has shot to the top of my queue.
Read more »This week, summer finally showed up in the Pacific Northwest – I realize that most of the rest of the country is in a record breaking heat wave but here in Oregon/Washington, it had been quite a chilly, rainy June. But no more! Now with the warmer weather, we are all scrambling to ditch our wool sweater projects and looking for some knitting/crochet projects that we can work on that won’t overheat us and that will be useful, whatever the temperature.
As it happens, Allyson Dykhuizen has a new free pattern that fits perfectly.
This is her Quartet of Headbands – 4 cute and light projects, perfect to knit up & wear immediatly, no matter the weather.
Read more »
All those baddies, small time criminals and other creatures of the night
have a new mitten-wearing crime fighter in the neighborhood to keep an
eye out for! My mittens are done! I was so excited about them that I
wore them around the office while they were still damp from blocking
today. I can’t wait for some cooler weather in the fall so that I can
break these guys out and wreak some vigilante justice. Or maybe just
grab a cocoa down the street. Either way, I’m one happy lady today.
Anyone else finish something they’ve been looking forward to today?
This week, Kelley shares her excitement for finding the perfect summer
bag! Finding a summer bag or tote for your knitting can be a
hard task and not only depends on how you will be using the bag, but
also what kinds of projects you are planning to carry with you. Kelley
reviews two of her favorite Namaste bags to help make your search a
bit easier. Next, Kelley shares her favorite books that are not just
wonderful reference books for experienced knitters, but also perfect
for helping new knitters advance their skills. Hear Kelley’s detailed
reviews on The Fearless Knitting Workshop by Jennifer Seiffert and The
Circular Knitting Workshop by Margaret Radcliffe. Finally, Kelley
catches you up on what projects are on her needles, what projects might
next be on the needles, and reviews a few of her favorite tools and
accessories to help everything stay nicely organized. And of course, Kelley can’t help but indulge you in a …
On my very first lace project, it was inevitable that I would make a mistake somewhere as I was working across with a few hundred stitches. This, of course, led to shedding a few tears before spending the next day ever-so-carefully unknitting several rows of lace. Fastforward a few months, when I stumbled across this amazing trick called a “lifeline.”
Simply put, a lifeline is a scrap piece of yarn that gets threaded through your live stitches on your needle and serves as a placeholder. If you realize you have made a mistake between your lifeline and the stitches on your needle, you can then happily pull your needle from the stitches and rip back until you hit your lifeline where you will find all of your stitches sitting happily on the scrap piece of yarn. You can then very easily place all of your stitches from your lifeline row back onto your needle, and continue forward!
And now,to take this little trick a step further, we’ve created a video tutorial that shows you how to use your Knit Picks Options Inchangeable Needles for lifelines! The best part? This useful tip shows you how to thread your lifeline scrap yarn through your stitches as you work across the row!
Read more »Have you ever had one of the months where you’ve been pulled in all different directions? I’ve been having a crazy couple of months (here’s hoping July slows down!) and I’m finding myself only working on semi-mindless, relaxing knits to distract myself. And using up my insane amount of sock yarn stash is a bonus.
Lately, I’ve been working on different shawl/scarves that are garter stitch with some neat construction to keep it interesting. I wrote about my Color Affection a few weeks back.
I finished it (but I haven’t had a chance to take photos of the whole thing). I really loved working on it.
Read more »If you’re looking for a fresh but simple lace pattern for summer, why not try the Modern Twist Shawl?
This shawl combines simple Garter stitch, eyelet rib and a basic border with short rows, strategic increasing, and intarsia.
Well! We’re back from our adventures at TNNA and finally settling
back in to this time zone. Between the airplane trip out and the little
bits of down time I was able to snag at the convention center, I finished one of the Fightin’ Words mitts I mentioned last week!
