Tagged: Books

July 13, 2013

A trip to Barnes and Noble

Well, after my first all-nighter of college, I’m finally done with first semester of organic chemistry. Taking such a difficult class squished into 5 weeks has been taking away all of my knitting time. I did have time to go on a date with the boyfriend to Barnes & Noble though where I got to take a look at the knitting books. There were a ton of books with patterns,mbut with Ravelry, buying a book doesn’t really seem worth it. However, the technique books looked pretty cool- I especially want the one on finishing techniques since that is the most confusing part for me.

I still haven’t knit anything with an exact size or shape in mind and its kind of intimidating… Especially since I’m lazy and never really do swatches…
Besides the above books which I might look for on amazon, I bought my first knitting magazine just to see what they’re like. They basically seem like pattern books to me but with some articles on technique. Here’s the one I bought:

It cost a painful $15 but it was really the only one with patterns that I would actually wear. Most of the magazines didn’t have much geared towards a 20 year old so this one surprised me with its trendy patterns. I really want to make the two sweaters below. It also has an article on knitting with intarsia on an angle that looks really advanced. Maybe I’ll check that out someday.

Where do you guys get your patterns? Has ravelry and the prevalence of online patterns (especially free patterns) made physical books obsolete for you? Also, do you guys have any recommendations for a book on finishing techniques?

January 17, 2013

Adventures in continental style

So after my post yesterday and with the arrival of my new books, I decided to give continental style knitting a try. The Principles of Knitting was very helpful on this subject. It gives plenty of pictures as well as about 10 variations on both English and Continental styles. Since the penguin was done, I decided to give it a try on the second sleeve for the sweater I’m making.

Now, I am extremely right handed- my left hand is practically useless when it comes to anything other than typing or playing flute. I cast on and did the first two rows normally. Then I switched the yarn to my left hand. Oh dear. I moved at a snails pace. I couldn’t get the tensioning right (generally it was too loose) making it difficult to wrap the yarn around the needle for each stitch. To be fair, I probably picked a terrible stitch pattern to try this out- I started knitting the ribbing at the base of the sleeve. This meant that I was constantly switching between knit and purl stitches.

After wrestling with it for a while, I started to get the hang of it. I can definitely see how it could be faster and more efficient with practice… a lot of practice. This is how much knitting I s able to do in an hour:

Still, like I said, I’m starting to slowly figure it out. I would really like to try out some Fair Isle knitting so I plan to keep practicing so I can hold one yarn color in each hand. All in all, a good trick to add to my repertoire!