couched X’s and embroidered barnacles
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All articles filed in tutorial
twisted stitch disambiguation
What are “twisted stitches?”
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A square for Adrienne Rich
Are you interested in designing your own blanket squares using the Square Share pattern template? If so, this post is for you! In what follows, I’ll describe my process when developing and designing a chart for a blanket square, inspired by the work of Adrienne Rich. If one has favourite poets, then Adrienne Rich is…
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Inside and outside the red box
Inside and outside the red box A Bold Beginner Knits tutorial for the Footfall shawl Many hand-knit designs – for everything from lace shawls, to Fairisle hats and cabled pullovers – use charted pattern repeats – which often appear within a red box. The red box is, I think, one simple reason why some beginner…
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Triangular shawl construction
A Bold Beginner Knits Tutorial Shawls can be constructed in many different ways, using many different shapes – triangles, rectangles, combinations of triangles and rectangles and other geometric shapes. Footfall is a triangular shawl with a top-down construction which begins by casting on a few stitches and ends by binding off many. This shape is…
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“join body and sleeves into yoke”
A Bold Beginner Knits tutorial for the Upstream pullover When you are knitting your first sweater an instruction to “join body and sleeves into yoke” might appear especially bamboozling. You have, on your needles, one body and two sleeves. How on earth do you combine these three separate tubes so that they magically become one…
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how much more yarn will I need?
Like quite a few of you, I’ve been knitting a Carbeth jumper. This one is my fourth, and each iteration has been, in its own way, an experiment. I made the body of number 4 even more cropped than in the pattern (the length from hem to underarm here is just 6.5 inches) and tried…
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blocking Carbeth
Quite a few knitters seem to be about to finish their Carbeths (yes, it is a quick knit!) , and I wanted to say a quick work about blocking this sweater. This garment requires wet blocking (soak for 20-30 minutes, press dry between towels) and should be blocked flat, as shown in the diagram above.…
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hap stretcher tutorial
As you know, I photographed my Moder Dy design on a beautiful vintage hap stretcher that I borrowed from my friend Anne Eunson. In Shetland, such stretchers have been used for well over a century to block haps and shawls ready for sale, as well as for their knitters’ own domestic use. (washing and dressing…
Read Morecovered button tutorial
Here is a tutorial to make the covered buttons, used in designs such as my Richard the Roundhead Tam, and Scatness Tunic. (These instructions can also be found in my book Colours of Shetland.) You will need: a plain button with a 1 in / 2.5cm diameter; thin cardboard (eg cereal box), sharp scissors, sharp…
Read Moresteeks and swants
Anatolia by Marie Wallin So, have you seen Rowan Magazine 54 yet? I finally got my hands on a copy yesterday and there are some wonderful designs in there. My two favourites are probably Anatolia by Marie Wallin – a beautifully luscious yoked sweater knit up in rich shades of Felted Tweed – and Sarah…
Read Moresteeks 4: your questions answered
Why do you weave in your ends away from the steek centre? This is just a personal thing: I know that many knitters recommend just leaving the ends in the middle of the steek (as everything will be trimmed later), but I personally don’t like to do this. I want the back of the work…
Read Moresteeks 3: the sandwich
In this post, I’m going to show you how to further reinforce (and cover) the cut edges of your steek using a techique that I’ve called “the steek sandwich.” There are many other methods of binding / covering steek edges – but this one works well, I think, for a steeked cardigan. The front edges…
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KDD & Co 