Knitting Hints and Tips from our Features!

Today we thought we'd share some of the tips our Beautiful Knitters instagram features offered up in submitting their profile!

Above: the Beautiful Knitters First Aid Kit!

To see the features don't forget to check out our instagram page!

Vithard

• Never be afraid to try new ideas. Inside of you is a creative force waiting to be unleashed. It is magic what you can create with knitting, just cast on, turn your mind of and knit and purl and see what beautiful shapes and textures you can create.

Aidan

• Ysolda Teague has a tutorial on cabling without a needle that changed my knitting life. I highly recommend it.

Carla

• My best tip for knitters is to enhance their skills. Often knitters love to knit, but are not fully pleased with the results they produce. What they make looks ‘homemade’, not ‘handmade’. Or the garments they make do not fit well. Education to enhance their skills improves their knitting and therefor also the joy they find in knitting. Even sewing things up after the knitting, a job a lot of knitters don’t like at all, becomes more rewarding and perhaps even fun to do when the result is more perfect.

Constance

• Don't let the level of difficulty or difficult techniques from a pattern stop you from casting on. We have so many vast resources at our fingertips or at our local libraries; therefore, many techniques can be mastered by watching tutorials or reading guidebooks. This is how I learned most things in knitting. It is for this reason, that I feel confident to soon cast on my first steeking project.

Dina

• To create the most beautiful things, you have to trust your own intuition rather than strictly following the instructions.

Christopher

• Learn from your mistakes. Before you unwind a failed stitch, spend time understanding the error. This will help you become a better knitter and decrease the number of mistakes in the future.

Lilia

• I have customers that purchase my knitting patterns and write to me asking for help, and I always tell them to have patience. Don’t get frustrated if you don’t understand something the first time, or don’t get the result you want. Perseverance and practice are the best tools, and more than that, the happiness, relaxation and calm that knitting and crochet can bring to everyone’s lives!

Kari-Helene

• My number one tip: always do a tension (gauge) square. It will save you from a lot of pain when your end result looks nothing like the pattern image and it doesn't fit the way it is supposed to!

Meg

• very now and then try something that seems a bit too hard - maybe a new stitch, or a type of project you usually wouldn’t do. There are lots of places to find help if you get lost. YouTube is amazing, and yarn stores are usually a hub of knowledge and experience. Trying something tricky and succeeding brings an amazing feeling and will boost your confidence to try more new or difficult things.

Zsuzsa

• Elizabeth Zimmerman's books are a must for all knitters. Her books made me believe in myself!

Anna-Lena

• Just start the project! Even if it seems too hard or you feel like you don't understand the pattern. Just do it. You will learn it on the way. And YouTube has everything that you need to get through challenging parts!

Calnek

• Idle hands are the devil's hands. Seriously, the only thing I tell anyone who asks, is to try and be as relaxed as knittingly possible from the fingertips all the way to the forehead, breathe from the belly, and enjoy the feeling of flying fingers! I sometimes get so focused and tense for so long I almost black out, because, of course, I forget to breathe.

Charlotte

• Always soak and block your work. It's amazing how much dirt/ dye comes off from soaking, and everything feels so much softer afterwards!

Karin

• Keep notes! Make a swatch with your yarn to check the gauge, and write down the details. This will speed things up if you want to use the same yarn again for another project!
• Advice from a perfectionist: Take the time to correct any mistakes you spot straight away on your project, don't carry on hoping nobody will notice... you will, and you may regret it after all the effort!