Free Knitting Patterns, Instructions, Projects & Designs.

A few days ago I was knitting with my buddies at my LYS. In came a gal who was knitting my Smock Top Sweater design, as seen in Knotions magazine. It felt so good to actually know someone who’s making my pattern. My little glow of pride was quickly dashed when she pointed out that there is an  error in the pattern. Two lines were swapped. Uhg.

For those of you who have already gotten the pattern from Knotions, please note the corrected lines for the Back section of the pattern should read:

For those of you who have already started knitting,  before the armholes start you can just flip the work over so the WS and RS are reversed for the back and for the front. Your selvedge stitch will be a purl stitch, but everything else should work out all right.

I’m so sorry for the inconvenience.

The new pattern can be found on the Smock Top Sweater page.

I had a blast making Hannah Fettig’s Bird’s Nest Pincushion to celebrate my friend Adrienne’s birthday.

Though the pattern calls for DK weight yarn, I wanted the nest to have a fairly solid structure to it. Also, I wanted the eggs to have a tight fabric to keep the fiberfill from showing. I chose worsted weight yarns, and knit them on the needle size from the pattern.

Both yarns are souveniers of the Great Portland Yarn Crawl a couple of weeks ago. Kilcarra of Donegal Aran Tweed came from Dublin Bay and lends a twiggy look to the nest. Some luscious Shi Bui Merino Alpaca from Knit Purl  has just the right blue shades for eggs. (Expect to see the Shi Bui again in some future design – I fell in love it!)

The nest is knitted in a delightful cable pattern. Once it was complete, I looked around for a way to block it so it would have a flat bottom when done. Voila! A juice glass was just the ticket to make it the right size around. I added a cereal bowl …

 And Ta-Da! The nest has a nice flat bottom (which I wish I could relate to) and sits flat, rather than rocking around.

I hope Adrienne likes her nest. She’s a fantastic seamstress, so it should be useful as a pincushion as she sews. If not,  she can always decorate a tree with it!

  If you want to check out Hannah’s book “Closely Knit”, you can find it here.

This weekend in Portland was Yarn Heaven. I attended the TKGA Knit & Crochet Show, taking some great classes and checking out the wares in the shopping area. It’s like a mini Stitches event. The market is smaller, but I got to see some wonderful locally produced yarns. The classes are smaller too, which gave me a chance to learn more.

I met up with my friend Alana, who you probably know as Nevernotknitting. We did a major Yarn Crawl, spanning a 24-hour period of fiber bliss. Happily, yarn stores in Portland stay open late. So on Thursday night we hit Dublin Bay, which was a beautiful store featuring lots of my favorite Rowan yarns.  Sadly, I didn’t get a photo inside the store. A blogger without a camera is, well, a space cadet I guess.

Next came one of my all-time favorite places on the planet – Knit Purl.

We stayed until closing at 9pm, hoping they’d just lock us in and let us browse and knit until they re-opened the next morning.

We saw so much yarn on Friday that I swear by the end of the day if someone had waved free cashmere in front of me, I would have missed it.

Here we are at the first stop, Twisted. Alana’s natural sense of style has her perfectly color coordinated with the sign.

The next store deserves a posting of its own, which I promise to get to another time. Abundant Yarn and Dyeworks is incredible – a large store with a deli in it (yarn AND food? oh my!), and its own line of hand dyed yarns. This “Socks Without Borders” afghan will be auctioned off at the Sock Summit to benefit Doctors Without Borders.

My trip home was… eventful. I adore taking Amtrak’s Coast Starlight from Portland to my home in California. I get a sleeping compartment and for 24 hours I have my own little world of knitting, gorgeous scenery, and no distractions. This time, however, there was a freight train derailment ahead of us. Apparently when cars fall off the tracks, it puts a kink in the rails. They must have worked like mad to pick up the freight cars and put in new rails. I would loved to have watched that whole operation! Still, we were 11 hours late getting home.

And then when I did get home I found this guy who had decided to claim our terrace as his new residence. He ran away from home and walked a long way to find to find the area’s biggest pushovers.

I have to go buy alfalfa now…

I am officially the Luckiest Girl in the World. I just got back from a wonderful trip to Portland, Oregon. The train ride between where I live and Portland is just under 24 hours, so I booked a bedroom. I loved having my own little world in which to knit, read and sleep. What could be better?! The scenery through the mountains was unbelievably beautiful. On the trip home we were in the mountains at night and the trees, snow and mountains were illuminated by a full moon. Heavenly!

I made the trip in order to take two workshops from Jared Flood, who many of you know as brooklyntweed. I’ll tell you all about the workshops in a later post. But first I just have to sing the praises of the fantastic shop that put these workshops on.

Knit Purl is wonderful knit shop in downtown Portland. The staff is knowledgeable, kind and helpful. As you approach the shop’s door, the pretty colors invite you in…

Once inside, you’re surrounded by alluring displays of yarn. The selection is incredible, and I found several yarns I previously didn’t know I couldn’t live without. My newest Favorite Yarn Ever is Kauni. I fell in love with the suble shading from one color to the next. You’ll be seeing a LOT of Kauni in my future projects!

The shop is an inviting place to sit, knit and drink tea. You’re surrounded not only by gorgous yarns, but also by terrific sample pieces on display.

If you’re in the Portland area, I hope you’ll visit Knit Purl. If you want to see the yarn offerings in their online store, you can go to the Knit Purl website. Also, you might want to check out the wonderful newsletter put together by the talented Sara. The newsletter mentions some workshops that I’m sorely tempted to head back to Portland to take. How about learning sock techniques from Lucy Neatby? Sounds like a lot of fun! I definately need to clone myself so one of me can be here enjoying the deer and other wildlife and another of me can be in Portland taking all these great workshops.

For those times when you can’t have a teacher by your side, here are tips and techniques that I hope you’ll find helpful. Say you’ve heard about knitting in the ends as you go. How on earth do you do that? Or you want to cast on for a stitch pattern that calls for both knit and purl stitches. Check out the links and descriptions below for the answer!

TIPS ONLINE:
One of the nifties sites for bits of tips and techniques is Knitting Universe’s Athena. You can perform a search or look up given categories. Up pops all kinds of tidbits from their extensive database.

CAST ON TECHNIQUES:
The Purl Long Tail Cast On is a great way to cast on for a pattern that uses both knits and purls. This is my favorite way to cast on ribbing for socks and sweaters. Thanks to Jennifer and her pieKnits blog!

WHAT TO DO WITH THE ENDS:
Do you get tired of weaving in a lot of ends? I love to knit in ends as I go, especially when doing fair isle patterns. Here’s a very nice YouTube video that demonstrates “Knitting in ends“.

BEFORE YOU START:
Don’t you just hate it when something has gone awry as you’re knitting a pattern and you can’t figure out what you’ve done wrong, and then you finally figure out the pattern has a mistake in it? Here are two suggestions that have worked well for me:

1. Before starting a pattern, do a search by pattern name, or go to the publisher’s web site, and check for corrections or errata.
2. When I get a book, or give one as a gift, I always look for corrections. I print the page of corrections and clip them to the inside of the book. For books I’m keeping, I mark up the patterns that have corrections. That way I know about the corrections as soon as I turn to the page.

I’m the Aud of AudKnits. I started knitting in 2004. My dear friend and knitter extraordinaire Margaret taught me my knits and purls while I was laid up from a foot operation. Learning new skills kept my mind busy. Margaret’s friendship turned out to be a precursor of the camaraderie I feel today when I knit with others.

My local yarn shop provides a place for knitters to gather. The store’s owner is gregarious and welcoming – every day friends come in to knit together. The shop’s teachers have given me the confidence to try new skills over the years. The combination of fun, friendship and learning has fueled in me a zeal for all things knit.

My first pattern emerged from the shop’s collective mania for sock knitting. The soft, beautiful Tonalita yarn was a favorite among our group. Generic patterns didn’t seem quite right for the yarn, so I wrote an easy pattern that showed off the yarn’s beautiful colors while also giving the knitter three sizes to choose from. I found that there is a lot more to designing than I would have imagined!

My artistic friend Mary, with her amazing eye for color, inspired me to create Mary’s Garden Sock. I did not care for fair isle knitting, but all off a sudden it “clicked” in my brain and now I love it. I guess the lesson for me was never to give up on any particular skill. Someday I might enjoy it after all!

Along the way I’ve come across little tips that have made big differences in how much I love to knit. You’ll find them here on my site as I add them over time. I hope you’ll find them useful too!

I hope you enjoy AudKnits!