***Originally published March 16, 2010***So, a very good friend of mine is getting married this summer, and just recently an assignment for this event arrived in my inbox. Her aunt is making a quilt for her and her fiance, comprised of 8″ square panels made by all their friends. So cute! But, simultaneously panic-inducing because I have never been able to draw anything besides letters and geometric shapes, which I scraped by with for most of elementary and middle school, but felt like I needed to do something a little more special for an occasion like this.So, I knew I had n...

***Originally published on May 11, 2012***Okay, so you’ve finished knitting that beautiful, cozy, time-consuming sweater. Aren’t you proud? Aren’t you psyched?? Don’t you want to try it on this minute and wear it all around town and show it off? Oh…wait…it’s in five different pieces? Hmm…maybe it would be best to just stick it back in the knitting bag and come back to it a little later…You’re not alone. Seaming your projects together after all the actual knitting has been done is often the bane of our existence. After all, it’s the knitting that you love, not hand-sewing, right?W...

***Originally published December 16, 2011***Let’s say you want to make a circular crochet project. Like let’s say, oh, coasters. Most crochet projects that begin from the inside and work their way out (think also, granny squares) begin by crocheting a chain, joining it, and then crocheting an uncomfortable number of stitches into that loop, from which your circle or square will then grow out of.Here’s the tricky part: this method inevitably leaves you with a big hole right in the middle of your work, as these into-the-loop stitches tighten themselves around the original loop. Here...

***Originally published on April 4th, 2014***There are so many ways to increase stitches in knitting — you can knit twice into the same stitch (often notated as KFB — knit into the front and back), you can do a yarn over and treat it as a real stitch on the next row (which leaves a hole in your work — this can sometimes be a beautiful design element!), or you may run into the terms “M1R” and “M1L,” which stand for “Make 1 Right” and “Make 1 Left.”The M1R and M1L is coming up a lot as I work through the Color Affection Shawl, which uses 1-2 of these increases on every single row.Often...

***Originally published on September 16th, 2011***Warning: things are about to get mathy up in here!This is a question we get all the time here at the shop: How do we figure out the cost of a cone of yarn?Well, figuring out the price on our house blends is easy — the price sticker inside the cone is how much that entire 8-oz. cone of yarn costs. But what if I want to make my own from scratch?Things still stay pretty simple if you just want to wind off a single strand of one of our yarns, or if you’re combining multiple strands of the same fiber, say, to build it up in thickness.Co...

***Originally Published September 10, 2010***I did not begin my knitting career as a follower of patterns.  I find this baffling since now, as the owner of a yarn store, I spend hours each week reading patterns like they are poems, analyzing them for clarity, coherence, and purpose; wading through hundreds of possibilities to find the perfect pattern to show off a new favorite yarn. I had no idea.  My first year of knitting was spent without a local yarn store, without Internet, and with a lot of free time.  I figured patterns were an option, rather than the norm.&n...