Oolong knits

Nurmilintu by Heidi Alander is a very popular pattern on Ravelry. No wonder, it is beautiful, easy to knit and free. The photo I chose is from Kinky's project. Oh, I miss the snow...

Centre pull balls are great to use and learning to do them from yanks is really useful. But... if you don't do them right, you get an awful tangle in the middle that is impossible to fix. It's in the middle of the ball, duh. I have been trying to wind a centre pull ball for quite some time, but all the videos and tutorials I'd found were not working for me. I'd actually given up doing it when I found this technique . Funny, that is just on knittinghelp.com , the web page I learned to knit with, and I'd never notice it before. Their video tutorials are great. Addendum: It has been a little longer than a year since I have written this post and I am shocked. I cannot recall ever using the above recommended technique. I do remember having problems with my first centre-pull balls, but in the last year I have been using them without any problem. The obvious drawback of the technique presented in the above link is that, unless you have huge thumbs, you can only w...

It's hard not to love a Gansey and it is hard to find a good free pattern of a real traditional one. I haven't looked at this one carefully (remember this is a eye candy series, not a pattern recommendation one), so I'm not sure how easy to follow it is. It doesn't look like particularly easy though. The pattern was written by Mike Clarke, but he credits the design to 'a woman from Bootie', because it's based on a sweater belonging to the National Waterways Museum in Gloucester, which was knitted in the 30's. So it is the real thing, a traditional inland gansey sweater . Thanks Mike!

While doing the series on socks on this blog, I remembered this really amazing sock tutorial . I really must recommend it, it's unbelievably detailed and easy to follow. You'll need to register on Crafty, if you're not a member already. They offer a lot of paid courses that might be well worth your money, but this one is FREE. There are also other free courses that may be worth your time, check them out after registering.

If this is not eye candy, I don't know what is. Really cute socks for kids (and adults which have never grown up too). The pattern is "Check Meowt!" Cat, Owl, and Panda Knee High Socks by Lauren Riker . Long name for long socks. Lauren has other similar cute sock's patterns, check her work on Ravelry.

This is the second post on this series. On the previous post, I've briefly discussed yarn, needles and gauge. Now we're going to actually start knitting, yuppie! As I mentioned before I am going to follow a standard cuff-down, flap-heel recipe. Before starting, one must decide how many stitches to cast-on. Needless to say, this will obviously depend on the circumference of the wearers ankle and the gauge one is knitting with (remember that, as discussed in previous post, you'd want to knit in a finer gauge than usual, because you want a firm fabric). I'm lucky to have pretty average feet and I'm using 2.5mm needles which is the most standard size for sock knitting, so I'm good to go with most sock patterns. Pro tip: You can make a more elastic cuff, by casting-on extra stitches and making a decrease row half-way through the cuff ribbing. For example, if using a k2p2 rib, cast-on 5 stitches for every 4 and start knitting a k2p3 rib. Then, after about 1 cm...

A modern twist on cable sweaters. What I really like about Beatnik by Norah Gaughan is how unusual and beautiful those cables look. Oh, and it's free and well written pattern. You can't ask for more.

This is the first of a short series of posts on sock knitting, where I am going to illustrate the process of knitting the socks I'm working at right now. I can see how some people may disagree with this, but I'm going to say that the standard way of knitting socks is the cuff-down flap-heel way, and this is the recipe that I'll illustrate in the following posts. Here, I'll discuss things one should take into account before actually starting to knit, like yarn, needles, gauge and the like. Needles: There is a lot of options and I'm not going to repeat what others have said better before me . I personally like to use the magic loop technique. I use it a lot, not only for socks, and I'm quite used to it. One important advantage of this method, as compared to dpns (double point needles), is that it is easier to avoid ladders (see photo on the left if you don't know what these are), but there are many more reasons to prefer the magic-loop method to dpns ....