Saturday Sampler: 8 FREE Knitting Tutorials

 

With all the extra time spent indoors, fall is a great time to learn a few new skills. Here are 8 FREE knitting tutorials I've found to help you ramp up your knitting this season:

  

TEN ways to work in ends as you go, from TECHknitting!

 Cabling without a cable needle, from the Knitting Daily blog (essential technique IMO).

 Methods for joining new yarn, from STITCH This!

 

 Knit Picks shows you how to set in sleeves.

 Short row shadow wraps, from Signest

 Anne Hanson offers a free mini class on grafting over at Craftsy.

 Ysolda teaches you the tubular cast on (which is a bit labor intensive, but really does look astonishingly better).

 And my photo tutorial on magic loop.

What new technique are you interested in learning?

Adventures in Steeking

After months of stranded knitting, one minor pattern misalignment mishap, and tackling stranding on the wrong side, I finally reached the point where I could go no further with this sweater without tackling the steek!

Since the sewing machine I got for Christmas last year is still in the box, unopened, a crochet steek was clearly the choice.

I am no great crochet wizard, but a crocheted steek really requires no previous crochet experience, just a hook and some yarn. Push the hook under 1 leg of each stitch you want to join, wrap the yarn and pull it through--it's not much harder than that.

The lines of crochet stitches ensure that your yarn won't unravel when you cut through the middle stitch. I did a swatch in the round for this sweater, and intended to practice steeking on it, but  . . . I couldn't find it. So, I just went right ahead with the sweater--if I ever do find the swatch, I can use it for a tutorial!

Snip snip! You can see the lines of crochet holding the knit stitches tightly--no unraveling here. The only places I had some trouble with unraveling were the top and bottom of the steek--not being an expert, I don't know the best way to handle this issue, I just used the ends of the crochet yarn to catch a few floats and stitches and tie them all together. The two loose edges from the steek fold back behind the collar, so you'll never see the mess.

And voila! A big gaping hole in my sweater. It just needs a collar.