Welcome to The Ordinary Knitter, the knitting podcast that’s (mostly) about the projects. This week: using technology, pick up and knit, a little (ha!) project for my mother-in-law and choosing your cast on and bind off with care. Particularly dire sound quality in this episode – next week I may record from a duvet fortress, so let’s hope there isn’t a heatwave.
Ft knitting patterns:
Ft knitting apps:
Ft knitting videos:
- Russian Bind-Off
- Intarsia
- Judy’s Magic Cast-On
- Jeny’s Stretchy Slipknot Cast-On
- Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off
- Three Needle Bind Off
Ft knitting tutorials:
Choosing a cast on and bind off
This is the first step of any project and although there are myriad techniques to choose from I bet most of us stick to a couple for the majority of our projects. Usually I learn a new cast on or bind off only because a project stipulates it or because I’m looking for (or to avoid) a particular finish, but those are the minority of cases.
My standard cast on is Jeny’s stretchy slipknot technique, and for socks/cuffs/necks/hats I’ll use her Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-Off and on anything that won’t look good with the frilled finish that leaves I’ll use the Russian Bind-Off. This is huge progress from my early projects that had circulation-stopping sock cuffs.
A recent discovery has been three needle bind off. When you have live stitches to seam (or can arrange matters so that you can do it that way) this is a very elegant bind off with no guesswork or judgment involved. Just make sure you do it the right way round and don’t leave yourself with Cyberman shoulders. You can get away with that when you’re nearly eight, but it’s harder to pull of in your 40s.
Music credit:
“Carpe Diem” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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