Oolong knits

The main point of this post is KNOTS ARE BAD. Don't ever allow knots on your knitting. Got it? Then you don't really need to read further. Why are knots bad? you may ask. Well they are kind of perverse and no matter what you do to keep them on the wrong side, they always find a way of sticking their head on the right side. So unless you're thinking of ornamental knots, like Celtic ones, which I'm not, you don't want them. There are two reasons why knots may appear on your knitting: (1) you've made them, (2) they showed up in the yarn you've bought. Both of these usually arise when someone, either you or the yarn producer, decide to join two threads the lazy way. Yes, there are ways to join ends without creating an ugly knot. For yarn producers it's more tricky and knots do occasionally show up even in the best quality skeins. If knots show up in your yarn, you must cut them! And treat the the rest of the skein as a new one. I get so annoyed with th...

These are the first socks I've knitted. I decided to go for toe-up instead of other options, because I thought it'd be easier, but I can't guarantee it is so, because I haven't tried another method yet. This socks are really very, very easy to do, but they do involve learning a few special techniques. Here is the list: for the toe: there are many ways to start the toe. It's hard to decide which one works best. However I used and do recommend Judy Becker’s Magic Cast-On (here is another useful link ). This cast-on makes a perfect look, and I mean perfect like completely invisible, you won't be able to tell. Furthermore, it is very, very easy to do, the easiest in my opinion. The only disadvantage is that you'll have to learn it. Come on, don't be lazy. for the cuff: you absolutely need a special bind-off. Trust me on this one. If you try to do the regular bind-off, even with larger needles, you'll never be able to put your socks on, the cuff...

I'm not going to bother to tell you how to prepare and use a gauge swatch. This information is easily available elsewhere, including on some of the links I've given in previous posts. If you want to know more, there is a great article on Knitty about 'swatching' . Knitty is a pretty good resource I haven't mentioned before, I should probably do a post on it in the future. I'm not going to do a post on the importance of gauge swatches and how you should always start by preparing one before every project, unless you've already got one from a similar project before, of course, because, again, you must have heard or read this one before. I'm just going to make a very short post emphasizing important information that you can read in the Knitty's article, but curiously enough, it is often not mentioned in other sources like books, tutorials, etc. And believe me, I've learned it the hard way. So here we go: Always prepare your swatch in the same ...

After making a post about Drops, that I recommended mostly for the very nice technique videos in their webpage, but also for their yarn's price/quality ratio, I started thinking about what are the best yarns out there. What do other people use and recommend? The feature I love the most about Ravelry , and the one I use the most by far, is their excellent advanced search. The great thing about it is all the possibilities it gives you to narrow the search results and to order them in such a way that you can easily make sense of what may be a list with thousands of items. You can for example lookup all yarn and order it by 'most projects'. Then you'll see what yarns people prefer to use. These are not necessarily the best yarn around. Looking at the results it is obvious it is more like the cheapest yarn around ;). The top of the list is occupied by some awful acrylic yarn I'd never recommend and much less use. The first good yarn you find is Cascade 220 , in the...