This week’s tip comes from Sara Delaney, one of our fantastic crochet instructors here at WEBS!

Making hairpin lace can be a really relaxing activity until it comes time to take it off the loom. How do you coral all those loops? Tin foil is your friend for this one! Simply pull off a piece of foil that is long enough and wide enough to wrap your loom like a present. Lay the loom down in the center of the foil, remove the top or bottom bar and slide the pegs out of your work leaving all those loops right in the midle of your foil, nice and neat. Fold up the sides, top and bottom and that strip will stay nice and tidy until you are ready to join it with others into a larger piece.

If you’ve never tried hairpin lace before and are curious what it is, check out some of these great patterns for inspiration.

• Filatura di Crosa Stole
• Wavy Coral Scarf from Interweave Crochet
• Marconi Beach Bookmark, great pattern if you’re new to hairpin lace
• Siona Stole from Crochet Lace Innovations by Doris Chan
• Tranquil Hairpin Lace Tunic from Crochet So Fine by Kristin Omdahl

Wet splicing is a great technique that can be used to join two pieces of yarn together. You can use it in place of weaving in ends, or if you come across a knot while in the middle of your row. 100% wool works best, but any animal fiber or any fiber that felts can be wet spliced.

Step 1: Take your two strands, and make sure your ends are frayed. If you’ve used scissors to cut your yarn, unply it with your hands. It’s easier for the wool to grab onto itself when the ends are rough. Overlap both strands about an inch in the palm of your hand.

Step 2: Take some water and wet down the yarn really well. The yarn needs heat and moisture to felt together.

Step 3: Rub your hands together quickly. You want to feel your hands starting to get warm.

Now, this acts as one strand of yarn. You might get a slight bump in the middle, but wool and animal fibers block so well, once you knit it into your project you’ll never even notice where you joined your strands.

Watch wet splicing in action by viewing the video below!

 

 

If you’ve struggled with messy edges on your knitting projects, you’re not alone. Knitting the first stitch of a row is tricky to get just right. I like to keep the edges of my project neat by slipping the first stitch of every row. This slipped stitch is then knit (or purled) when you work back on the next row.

 

Some people strive for their projects to look as perfect as possible while other choose to embrace the imperfections of hand knitting.

 

Do you have any tricks for keeping your knitting neat? Or do you let the stitches fall where they may instead?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Instead of weaving in your ends at the start of a project or when joining a new ball, try knitting the tail of the yarn right into your project.

• Hold the tail and the working yarn together and knit 3-4 stitches.
• Knit these stitches a little tighter than you normally would to cut down on the bulk knitting with two strands.
• Then, when you knit the next row, just make sure you knit into both strands for these stitches.

This works best with wools that will block well and hide the areas with slightly more bulk.

Weaving in ends is my least favorite part of knitting. Do you have any other suggestions on how to avoid weaving in ends?

Thank you to Theresa, our Customer Service Supervisor who shared this fantastic tip with us!

I love the look of stockinette stitch, but it will roll if it’s used alone as an edging. The solution: knit in stockinette for the public side of your work, and ribbing for the inside of the work.

Here, Theresa worked stockinette, then a purl row, then ribbing. She tacked the facing down with a few stitches and it lays flat beautifully. This technique will give you the clean look of stockinette without the headache of rolling edges!

 

 

 

Hand-dyed yarns can vary quite a bit in shade, even within the same colorway.  If you knit through one skein completely, then another, you’ll see a distinctive line in your project where the two skeins meet. This isn’t a problem if you’re making a one skein project, but what if you want to make a sweater, a shawl or something else using multiple skeins of hand dyed yarn? Try alternating your skeins! If knitting or crocheting flat, work two rows from one skein, then work two rows from another and so on. If working in the round, switch skeins at the start of each round. This will blend the color changes together to transition more smoothly and will give you a much cleaner look.

This same technique can be used when using commercially dyed yarns from different dye lots.

Thanks to Kirsten Hipsky, our Design Manager, for offering us some great tips on how to avoid ladders. Ladders are gaps created in your knitting when using double pointed needles. They can be prevented using one of a few simple tricks.

“Laddering” is definitely a common dreaded foe when working with double pointed needles. They’re essentially caused by the distance between the two needles, which is greater than the distance between the other pairs of stitches. If you purl looser than you knit, that could also result in more yarn in the gap between needles when working reverse stockinette. Here are some tips for minimizing or eliminating ladders.

- Tighten up your stitches when moving from one needle to the next by giving the yarn a little extra tug after working the first and second stitches.

- Using a set of 5 needles rather than 4 will divide tension more evenly, keeping strain off of the stitches themselves.

- If you’re still having trouble, try knitting a couple of stitches forward from the next needle onto the one you’ve just finished. This will shift the point of tension and help keep a vertical line from forming.

 - I myself have had luck eliminating ladders entirely by knitting in the round on one long circular needle using the Magic Loop method. The circular cord is usually thinner than the needle, so instead of using extra yarn at the gap between needle and cord, it just borrows some yarn from the stitch on the cord. When it comes time to knit that stitch, it expands again to fit the needle, taking up the slack. Others have also had luck using two circular needles instead of Magic Loop.

How do you avoid creating ladders in your knitting? Do you have a trick, or have you stopped using double pointed needles all together?

I love using interchangeable knitting needles. Late at night or after the yarn shop has closed, I know that I will still have just the right needle size for those spur-of-the-moment knitting projects that I just need to start…right now. Now, many knitting needle companies (Denise, Knitter’s Pride, Addi) have added Tunisian crochet hooks that work with your interchangeable knitting needle sets.

I’ve read about how if you have trouble picking up stitches you can pick them up with a crochet hook and transfer them to your knitting needle. But I find that method a little tedious. A much slicker method is to use an interchangeable Tunisian crochet hook to pick up stitches around a neck or along a button band. As you pick up the stitches with your hook, they slide along and collect on the cord. Once you’ve finished picking up the correct number of stitches, just switch out the Tunisian crochet tip for a knitting needle tip and away you go, knitting the button band or neckband.

When Kathy O, one of the recent graduates of the Expert Knitter Certification Program, handed in her final project and design journal we noticed an interesting tip!

Kathy knit and blocked her swatches, and then placed them on a photocopier and printed a copy of her swatches onto graph paper. This allowed her to always have her swatches with her for quick reference, without having to carry around the bulk of multiple swatches, or risk damaging the swatches. This can also be done using a scanner.

Thanks to Tina McElmoyl for this week’s knitting tip, sure to help the next time you need to pick up stitches for a collar or armhole.

When I need to pick up a specific number of stitches evenly, around an armhole or along a hem, I like to mark the pick-up edge at regular points with locking stitch markers. This helps me to distribute the picked-up stitches so that there is a similar amount between each marker. If I’m picking up along a hem, I’ll fold the fabric in half to give me an estimate of the halfway point. If I’m picking up along a circular edge, an armhole for example, I’ll mark the edge at 12 o’clock and 6 o’clock (and maybe also at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock).