Two-stitch cables. The smallest little cable possible. Do you really need a cable needle?….Nah.
I haven’t posted a YouTube video in eons, but here are 2 short ones that show you how to do them in 1 quick maneuver. One going left (1/1 LC) and the other going right (1/1 RC). And they are fun tricks!
“Why were they made?” you ask. Almost every pattern I publish has a section of Helpful Links which assist you through webpages, videos, etc. in some of the technique in the pattern.
Enjoy!
Just like everyone else, I have my favorite designers. I like to see what they’re up to and know when they’ve published a new design on Ravelry.
Tonight I thought I’d show you a nifty little trick on just how you can do that!
Log into Ravelry and click on the magnifying glass in the top menu. This is Ravelry’s search function.
This will open up the search screen. In the search bar, type the name of the designer that you’d like to follow… me, perhaps?
This will open yet another screen. At the very bottom, it reads, “Advanced Search.” Click “patterns.”
Once again, a new screen opens. Be sure to follow steps 1 – 4 as listed in the image below.
This will save the search and keep you updated on the designer’s latest work. Every time a designer you’re following has a new pattern, a little blue dot will appear near the magnifying glass, like this…
Click the magnifying glass and you will see which designers you’re following have new patterns. Click the designer name and you can sort by newest patterns.
And….VOILA!
We’re all relatively happy in our day jobs, but what brings us real joy is when we’re creating. Only two of us are really making any money with our side hustle – two others wish they could find a way to do that, and another’s just happy doing what he loves to do. Personally, I know there’s ups and downs to the side hustle – (here’s an overview) – mainly that it’s hard to keep my life in balance.
I’ve been reading, watching and wondering a lot about balance and the “side hustle.” If you don’t know what a side hustle is, here’s a short TED talk which explains. Apparently one in two of every millennial has a side hustle. In my immediate family (husband and three children between 20 and 25), we all hold traditional jobs, but we’re all creatives — designer, painter, dancer, digital artist, musician.
But mostly, even if it does get crazy sometimes – my own designs, deadlines for publications, and submissions, along with my regular gig as an education director – I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s saved me from feeling stuck and kept me going in my day job at times. I feel lucky that my passion is my side hustle.
Do you have a side hustle or is your hobby enough as is?
So this is how it all turned out…
The issue was horizontal vs. vertical vs. wedge alignment. I was thinking about it all wrong. Because a yoke is circular, thinking about it “linear-ly” doesn’t work. Wrap your head around a wedge, as in pieces of a (circular) pie, and then it works.
Right now I’m at work on another one and trying quite hard to have it ready for a late February/early March release.
Love a good top-down yoke sweater, but how to align all those motifs?
This week I got a lesson in vertical alignment.
When the yoke for a sweater I designed didn’t look quite right, I went back to the drawing board and discovered that combining motifs is more than just choosing what “looks good” together. It’s putting increases in just the right positions to create a swivel point (stitch/stitches) around which the whole yoke revolves. Trickier than it seems.
So it was back to the drawing board. Reknitting and it’s working now.
Interested in seeing progress? Check back next week.
I love the idea of seamless construction. Wrapping up the knitting and being able to almost instantly wear a garment has definite appeal.. I wouldn’t say I dislike finishing, because I don’t, but it’s definitely not as much fun as knitting.
The issue with seamless construction, particularly with a raglan, is that the increasing (for top-down) or decreasing (for bottom-up) for body and sleeves often happens at different rates. If it doesn’t happen at a different rate, then sometimes you get sleeves that are too big or too small for the bust size you’re working.
Writing a pattern to accommodate this, without muddying the directions is tricky!
Right now, I’m working on a cardigan pattern where this is happening. In addition to the sleeve and body shaping, neckline shaping happens at the same time at yet a different rate.
What to do? I’ve constructed a crude chart that I’m still tweaking to help knitters follow along for their individual size. I’d be interested to hear what you think works best in these situations.
Playing around yesterday with a cardigan design idea. There’s something about this yarn that always draws me in and I’m wondering if Carol does color cards.
I love the idea of mosaic knitting, but it always seems that there’s not that many “new” ones out there. They’ve all been overused. Looking through some of my stitch pattern books, I came up with this one. Not too big of a row or stitch repeat, and it seems just the thing for my cardigan.
