Tag Archives: hot tips

Hot Tip: Keep your cables straight

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Hot Tip: Keep your cable directions straight

It occurs to me this might have been a useful Hot Tip to offer up at the start of the Amanda knitalong. (Oops.) I’m always encouraging people to knit cables early and often — such an insanely simple thing with such a huge effect. All you do is slip a designated number of stitches onto a cable needle or spare DPN, knit the next stitches from your working needle, then knit the stitches from the cable needle. And voila, a cable! That’s all it is! In my world-class illustration above, you would need to do this exactly two times to create the fabric pictured, and the world will think you’re a savant of some kind. The only trick is remembering whether to hold the cable needle in front or back of the work while doing this, as that determines which direction your cable will twist. Hold it in back for a right twist. Hold it in front for a left twist. I’ve never heard a really perfect tip for remembering which is which, but I once heard Josh Bennett say that the best thing he’s ever come up with is to say to himself, “I’ll be RIGHT behind you.” Meaning if the held stitches are behind the work, the cable will twist right. Right = behind. After hearing that, I mentally added “wouldn’t want to get LEFT out front.” And I’ve never struggled with cable directions since, even though this pair of sayings is relatively random. So I’m offering them up to you in case you find them useful, and fully expecting many of you to have other/better suggestions on top of that. Bring it on!

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PREVIOUSLY in Hot Tip: Annotate your charts

Hot Tip: Annotate your charts

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Hot Tip: Annotate your knitting charts

A good chart is a thing of beauty unto itself, but knitting from one can be a little daunting — especially if it’s numerous stitches wide and/or many rows tall. Each of our brains works differently, so it’s important to be able to annotate a chart in whatever way makes it make the most sense to YOU. Pictured here are Meg Strong’s chart and my chart for the project we’re both knitting. And you can see our two minds reflected in them:

— Meg has enlarged hers to 8.5×14 and attached it to an 11×17 sheet of paper, along with the stitch guide and legend, and she’s color-coded all of it with highlighter pens. Each color indicates a different cable stitch, and the corresponding description in the guide is highlighted the same color. As you can see, it makes each of the cable stitches stand out more clearly from the surrounding stitches, and it’s easier to follow the direction of the cables as they lean this way and that — especially within the honeycomb. (Note that she’s also opting to mirror the diamond cables so they twist toward each other, rather than having them all twist left as written, so she’s simply made a note beneath the center crosses about which direction she’ll twist.)

— Me, I’m perfectly happy in black-and-white and small-scale. But for my brain to make this digestible, I have to divide it up into its component parts. I’ve drawn a rule (that’s design-speak for “a line”) down the chart to separate each of the sections. (“Like with like” is my mantra in all of life.) This way I can clearly see the honeycomb portions, the slipped-stitch portions (with flanking purls), the diamond panels, and the braid. The purls no longer blur together and the rows are broken up into easily memorizable chunks. And everywhere I’ve drawn a rule on the chart I’ll also place a stitch marker in my knitting. So I always know exactly where I am, and never have to think very hard about it. If I get off course, I’m going to know it within a few stitches without even looking at the knitting — the stitch markers will let me know.

The point being: It’s your chart; make whatever kind of marks are helpful to you!

There’s also the matter of keeping track of what row you’re on. I’m a big fan of a wide post-it note or piece of post-it tape, and I place it below the row I’m currently working. I like to be able to see where I’m going, since my knitting shows me where I’ve been. But lots of people do the opposite. This here post from almost exactly one year ago is also full of great advice from you guys about other ways to track progress, so check the comments on that. And if you have anything to add, let’s hear it!

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AND HERE’S ANOTHER HOT TIP: You can cable without a cable needle. If you find cable needles too fussy and want to learn how to do without, Kate posted a tutorial on the Kelbourne blog.

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PREVIOUSLY in Hot Tip: Remember right- vs left-leaning stitches

Hot Tip: Remember right- vs left-leaning stitches

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Hot Tip: Remember right- vs left-leaning stitches

If you’ve been knitting for very long at all, you’ll have encountered multiple kinds of increase and decrease stitches. You may also have come to realize that each one has a lean to it. (For instance, your first hat may have used k2togs for all of the decreases, which creates a sort of swirling crown, since the k2togs all lean in one direction.) Perhaps you’ve even come to understand that for every right-leaning increase or decrease, there’s a corresponding left-leaning version. To prevent fabric that leans one direction or the other, increases and decreases are often deployed in mirrored pairs, such as a k2tog (right-leaning decrease) paired with an SSK (left-leaning decrease). Or m1L increases paired with m1R increases. The trouble many knitters have is remembering which stitches lean which direction. So here’s an invaluable tip I picked up from Barry Klein once upon a time:

A stitch will always lean in the direction the working needle is pointing when you work that stitch. Stop and repeat that to yourself a couple of times, and point with your index finger like it’s your needle. When you insert your working needle into the front of your stitch(es) — as with a k2tog or m1R — you insert it from left to right. The needle points to the right and the resulting stitch will lean to the right. Conversely, when you knit through the back of your stitch(es) — as with SSK or m1L — you insert the working needle from right to left. The needle points left, and the resulting stitch will lean left.

Once you have that lightbulb moment, reading charts becomes much simpler. For instance, the “\” symbol leans left (“my needle will be pointing left, so I’m working into the back of the stitches, which I do when I SSK!”) and the “/” symbol leans right (“my needle will be pointing right, so I’m working into the front of the stitches, which means a k2tog!”). With the m1’s, you do have to think a tiny bit harder: “If I want it to lean left, m1L, that means I’m knitting into the back, so I will have picked it up from the front.” And vice versa. But you’ll have it memorized in no time flat.

Hot Tip: Remember right- vs left-leaning stitches

Hot Tip: Show your work

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Hot Tip: Show your work

This is not the most obscure of tips — and I don’t recall where I first picked it up — but it’s an immensely useful one: To keep track of how many increases (or decreases) you’ve done in a sequence, simply pin a marker in each increase round. (Obviously I’m partial to these.) That way you can see at a glance exactly what you’ve done, and you’re infinitely less likely to have this all-too-familiar conversation with yourself: “Uh oh, did I forget to increase? Or … did I increase but then forget to mark it off in my notebook?” (Or check a box, or advance the counter, or whatever the method may be.) And sure, if you’re good at reading your work, you can always hunt down the increases, and count your stitches, and figure out what you’ve done. But being able to glance at it is a whole lot faster.

It’s also a great way of making notes to yourself when you’re not working from a pattern. For instance, this is the second of Bob’s sleeves. The first one was starting out a little too small, so with this one I’m increasing more rapidly. When it’s done, I’ll be able to clearly see that I increased four stitches in the first round after the ribbing (I pinned two markers in that round to indicate twice the normal increase), that I started my regular increases two rounds later, and that I increased every inch thereafter. And I’ll know how many times I increased in total. So I’ll have no trouble replicating that for a matching sleeve. Of course, once all is said and done — before I take the pins out — I’ll write down what I wound up doing, in case I should want to do it again in the future.

Anna Maltz (of this week’s Our Tools, Ourselves) happened to post about this very thing a few days ago, and she had a bonus tip: If she’s doing, say, 12 increases, she pins 12 markers along the bottom edge of the work. Their presence keeps her mindful of the need to increase, and once they’ve all been transferred to their respective increase points, she knows she’s done increasing. Clever!

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SHOP NOTES! Speaking of my beloved antiqued brass stitch markers, I’m pleased to report that they’re finally back in their lovely brown kraft envelopes — now with resealable flaps! (A day I’ve been dreaming of.) And: POM POM 9 IS HERE! (And this one includes a sewing pattern!) AND: I’ve got another stack of copies of Cable Fashion Drama, in case there’s anyone out there who still doesn’t have one. Plus the exquisite bone DPNs have been restocked in almost all sizes.

Hoorah, hooray and happy weekend, everyone! What will you be working on?

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PREVIOUSLY in Hot Tips: Mismatch your needles

Hot Tip: Mismatch your needles

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Hot Tip: Mismatch your needle tips

Hey look, here’s a new semi-regular series, Hot Tip, wherein I pass along nuggets of brilliance I’ve picked up from various knitting geniuses (or stunningly insightful observations of my own.) Here is a handy trick I learned from Josh Bennett once upon a time, or the ladies in the room who beat him to the punch—

When we knit back and forth, we use both needles, alternating between them as we work each row, right? But when knitting in the round, we only* knit with the right-hand needle. The left needle is really just holding stitches for us, so there’s no reason it needs to be the same size as the working needle. One major benefit of knitting with interchangeable needles is that you can attach a smaller needle tip to the left end of the cable, which makes it a little easier to keep your stitches sliding up onto that needle, especially if you’re a tight knitter. It also means those needles’ partners are free for other projects you might be knitting at the same time.

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*Unless you’re working short rows, or for any other reason turning the work at some point, in which case you would be alternating which needle you’re knitting with.

(Lykke “Driftwood” interchangeable needles available at Fringe Supply Co. — photo updated April 2019)