If you don't know anything about knitting . . . well, you probably shouldn't be in this section of the site since I have no intention of posting knitting instructions; there are more than enough obvious places to look already. But if you stumbled onto my site looking at, say, the Moebius scarf or Klein bottle hat and have no idea what the fuck I was talking about in the description of the patterns, or if you ever wondered how I came to be interested in knitting or how I went about learning, then that's what this page is for.
I taught myself to knit when I was eighteen, right before it became trendy. Now that it's going out of style again, I'm disappointed to note that the size of the yarn selection in the craft stores is going down, but at least it's more varied than it was when I first started. There's the added bonus that the silly, obnoxious novelty yarns that plagued the scene in the heyday of the trend are disappearing, being replaced with more practical, serviceable basic yarns in tasteful colors. (Yeah, I'm a snob.) Also, there are more websites and patterns devoted to the craft than before, but nowadays there are more sensible patterns than the absurdity of the cel phone carrying cases and lamp shades that clogged the Internet before. (Side note: Why the hell would anyone want a sweater for her phone? something that's been specifically designed to emit a certain amount of heat in order to function? But I digress.)
I had wanted to knit for many years before I ever learned. When I was about nine, I read The Hunky-Dory Dairy, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in which a young girl wore a shawl she'd made herself. There was an illustration of her wearing it, and several mentions of it within the next. I instantly wanted to knit a shawl, too, but I didn't have any yarn or needles.
Fast forward nine years. The spring semester of my freshman year at UT, I had a job, a car, and Internet access—three things I lacked as a teenager, otherwise I certainly would have begun knitting sooner. After skimming some knitting patterns on the Internet, I went to Michael's, the craft store nearest my house, and bought a pair of size eight needles, which seemed to be the most common size. I already had yarn at home leftover from some junior high school project. I printed out how-to instructions from a couple of different sites, sat on the floor of my room with the new needles and ancient yarn beside me, and spent the next three days furiously trying to learn how to cast on. The instructions didn't make a whole lot of sense—They were not too vague, but rather too detailed. In the end I abandoned the text altogether and simply went by the pictures. Worth a thousand words, indeed.
So I figured out the casting on process and then proceeded to the knitting itself, which proved much easier, but again, the instructions were overly complicated. Around this time I realized that the size eight needles were too small for a beginner, and the dark brown yarn was too dark to see what I was really doing. This ultimately proved advantageous, though, because it meant that I had the difficult part out of the way.
My first few projects were simple scarves, just to get the hang of it. I used up my scrap yarn from junior high and threw away those projects. Then I found an easy pattern for a shawl and made it. I have it to this day; it still gets compliments.
I then decided it was time to knit a sweater, but alas, my first cardigan was a disaster and I threw it away after not having worn it more than a few times. It was soft and the pockets were lovely, but it was huge and the buttons were awful. I abandoned sweaters for several months; then I made the dark green ribbed sweater that still gets compliments. I've knitted a few other sweaters since then, but I've donated most of them to Goodwill either because I just wasn't wearing them anymore or there was something about them I didn't like.
I started my first website (the prototype of this one) around the time I learned to knit; it was inevitable that my knitting would find its way here eventually. At first I only had pictures of my knitted projects; then, once I'd modified a few patterns enough that posting them wouldn't be plagiarizing, I posted a couple. Finally, I designed a few patterns of my own and posted those. It seemed only logical that I should acknowledge that the knitting section of my site was becoming a major section and deserved a kind of FAQ. So, here goes. I've started with the basic, boring stuff. If you'd rather skip that, just scroll down to the section on patterns and charts.
The Basics
Knitting, as I hope you already know, is a method of creating fabric by pulling loops of yarn through each other with needles. It is distinct from crochet, which uses a single hook, or weaving, which uses a loom. I don't know how to crochet; I never learned because I don't like the fabric it creates. I wouldn't mind learning how to weave, but the materials cost too much.
Anyway. Knitting is quite simple, contrary to what non-knitters seem to believe. There are only two basic stitches, the knit stitch and the purl stitch. A knit stitch looks like a V from in front and a bump from behind; a purl stitch is the opposite. The purl stitch is what creates the "wrong" side of the fabric. Typically, you knit one row, turn the project over, and then purl one row. Knitting every other row and purling the ones in between creates the most basic fabric with a right and wrong side. All knitting uses only these two stitches in varying patterns, such as alternating knit and purl stitches, using a cable needle, or various methods of increasing or decreasing the number of stitches to change the shape of a garment.
Tools of the Trade
There are three basic types of knitting needles: straight, circular, and double pointed. Straight needles are the classic, stereotypical ones that I use for most projects; the two needles are useful for sweaters, scarves, and shawls. Circular needles are two straight needles attached with a wire, so you essentially have a long, flexible double-ended needle, used for knitting in the round (meaning you create a seamless tube of fabric instead of a flat surface; sweaters, scarves, and hats can be made this way). Knitting in the round is especially nice because there are no wrong side rows—because the "ends" of the fabric are attached, it's all one right side, like a spiral, with the right side always facing you. Because of the extra length of circular needles, I most often use them for creating blankets; I don't join the fabric to create a tube but leave it flat. This means there's plenty of room for all the stitches, plus the wire holds the weight of the project, so when it gets heavier as I add more fabric, I'm not supporting the weight of it myself. Finally, double pointed needles are, as the name implies, like straight needles but with points on both ends. They come in sets of four or five and are similar to circular needles in that they are used to create tubes of fabric. Because they are not joined together like circular needles, however, it is possible to work with fewer stitches and thusly create much smaller tubes of fabric than you could with circs, such as socks, mittens, and the crowns of hats.
Then there are cable needles, which are short and double pointed with a kink in the middle. These are used when working a project with a cable (a twist) in it. Usually, stitches are knitted in the same order in every row, but permuting the order which stitches are knitted, so that they cross each other, will form a cable pattern. This is done by placing stitches on a cable needle and holding it in front of or in back of the work, depending on which way you want the twist to turn, knitting stitches from the other straight needle, and then knitting the stitches that were on the cable needle.
There are plenty of other knitting tools: place markers, little plastic rings put on the needle in between stitches to keep track of a certain stitch (essential when knitting in the round so you can tell where the beginning of the round is); stitch holders (like large safety pins, used to hold extra stitches that you don't need to knit yet); scissors, obviously; yarn needles for sewing seams and weaving in loose ends; row counters to keep track of numbered rows on more complex patterns; etc. There are also a lot of silly, pricey variations on the above, like really decorative place markers (which I think would just get in the way) or point protectors for needles (which are neither sharp nor need protecting from keeping the stitches from slipping off; sticking the end of the needle through the fabric already created or even just wrapping a rubber band around it will do the trick better). There are also carrying cases for knitting needles in varying degrees of cost, inefficiency, and ugliness. I stick all my needles in a vase; I prefer the look of it.
Patterns and Charts
The nitty gritty. (No, not knitty gritty. Even I'm not that dorky.)
Knitting patterns can appear as written instructions or as a graph. When I first learned to knit, I swore by written instructions since that was all I understood, and for more basic patterns, they are better. But now that I'm a more seasoned knitter and have learned to comprehend charts, I prefer this method, at least for more complex patterns. Patterns involving frequent color changes or complicated cabling, for instance, would be difficult to follow in written instructions. When represented on a chart, however, with symbols representing stitches and a legend to interpret them, you can simply read the symbols. It's especially nice to be able to compare the fabric to the chart; it's a bit like working a puzzle and referring to the picture on the box.
It does take a bit of practice learning to read a chart, though; it's not intuitive: Knitting charts are boustrophedonic. If you're a mathematician, possibly referred here on a quest for a Klein bottle hat or Moebius scarf, you may already know this term. Boustrophedonic means that, rather than being read from left to right or right to left, alternate lines are read in opposite directions, like an ox ploughing a field. This is because knitting charts are written to look like the completed pattern, and when actually knitting, you work back and forth across the rows like an ox drawing a plow across a field and turning at the end of each row to return in the opposite direction.
For instance, the chart from the infinity sign I used in the Klein bottle hat:
The first stitch is the one in the bottom right hand corner. Then the stitch to its left, then the stitch to its left, and so on until the stitch in the bottom left corner is reached. Then the piece is turned to work back across, beginning with the left side and working back to the right. But when working on the wrong side, you have to remember that you are not actually working the chart as written. Because the chart is written to look like the right side of the completed project, you have to remember that when working a wrong side row on the chart and you see what looks like a knit stitch, you actually work a purl stitch so that it looks right on the right side. Clear as mud? Thought so.
Of course, none of this counts when you're knitting in the round and there are no wrong side rows. Ha.