Sunday, December 23, 2012

Knitting Basics to remember.

I've been trying to do some knitting again.

It seems like I always pick it up fast, but then loose steam.  (Thank you to my many teachers over the years)  I think I've learned how to knit from my Mom, a best friend, my Mom's Aunt and now a new friend here in New England.

So after my most recent lesson I went onto youtube to find some videos to help me remember what I'd learned

Long Tail Cast On-

Continental pearl stitch-

Continental Knit stitch

Binding off the needle

garter stitch/ mattress stitch

Or for any knitting tutorial imaginable try Knitting with Nancy Wynn


My friend here in New England got me started on a sweater for Toby.  It is going to be cute, I've been working on it for a month and have the front, back and part of a sleeve done.  But I put it down for a few days so I could make something for the Christmas tree that I have always wanted.

Mini mitten ornaments
I think they turned out great for an amateur knitter


When I was growing up we had a pair of these on our tree and a pair of paper clip iceskates.  They were some of my favorite ornaments to get out every year.  
Maybe I'll make a new pair every year and I can make them more and more detailed as my skills improve.  

Here is the pattern I used

I learned how to do ribbing, save stitches on a needle to work latter and how to make an I chord

And here is an iceskate pattern if I ever get around to them.

I'll post pictures of the sweater when i am done with it.
Next month I have another friend helping me remember how to crochet, I wonder what sort of wonderfulness she will help me to create!

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

simple skirt tutorial

Here is one of the previously mentioned frustrating tutorials.  If you know how to make all the photos stay turned in the right direction through the uploading process PLEASE let me know.  I am going to be teaching some sewing lessons this week and I wanted to be able to send my students the pattern online so they can review it before class, but I want it to look professional.

Simple Skirt Tutorial


tutorial frustrations


I have been trying for years to figure out how to most efficiently post a tutorial.
Word normally doesn't have enough Memory to save all the photos, online tools normally don't allow me to move the photos and shapes as I want them and When I try to convert stuff to be seen on line it always gets changed in the conversion process.
For example when I tried to make a document into a pdf file it did not keep the columns I had formatted in word.  And when I upload my power points to google docs all the photos that I rotated go back to being upside down.
Does anyone hove any good methods they can share with me?  I have spend so many wasted hours on tutorials that never make it up here on the blog because I can't figure out how to make them look right.