5 Pro Tips to Instantly Improve Your Knitting

Good morning thank you for joining me here. I am Mary Beth Temple and I'm an instructor here, and I have been knitting for a really, really, really, really long time and there's lots of little tips and tricks that you might figure out with practice, but if I tell you some of the better ones, it'll make your knitting better. From a small detail perspective, it's the, it's the details that make your work look fabulous. Now I see we have a lot of people online with us today, so please ask your questions, and I know that the title of this has been Five Tips. There might be more.

We'll see, we'll just see how the morning goes, but if you have questions about the details of your beginning knitting projects, please ask them in the chat and I will get to them if I can. Now, the first thing I want to give you a tip about is choosing the right yarn for your project. Because we have two different types of knitters, right? We call them processed knitters, which they just wanna do the knitting. They don't care necessarily what the project is that they're working on, and we have project knitters and what they want is a very specific finished project.

however they get there is however they get there, so you might want a black scarf. You might want a hat in a really fuzzy yarn. You might want a shawl with 20,000 beads on it. Those are not necessarily good projects to choose when you are picking the first or second project that you're doing. Dark yarns are harder to knit because you can't see the stitches as well, and if you've been knitting for a million years like I have, and you can sort of feel your way, that's one thing.

But if you're a beginner knitter or a newer knitter, you don't want to go with a black yarn. If you do go with a black yarn, don't do what I did here and use a black knitting needle. You want to make sure that you have some contrast between your knitting needle and your yarn, and again, not only are fuzzy yarns harder to knit with because you can't necessarily see the stitch, if you make a mistake they're also harder to rip out because the little fuzzies that you get on there, um, can, can get caught in the stitch and then you can't rip it out very easily and fix your mistake. So when you're choosing yarn for a project, make sure that you choose something that is enjoyable to work with because it may not be that you don't like knitting, it may be that you don't like knitting with the tools, the project, the yarn that you've chosen. So choosing carefully for your early projects, that's my very first tip.

The second one that I have is that a lot of newer knitters cast on too tightly. And what happens is your work is here and your first row is here and it pulls in at the bottom and I'm going to show you two little tips to make sure that your cast on is not too tight. Now one is you can cast onto two needles at the same time. So that gives you a super loose cast on, but if you're somebody who struggles with being super tight, this is a great option for you. If you're doing work like brioche knitting, which, uh, maybe not for your first couple of projects, um, but there are certain stitch patterns that require a really loose cast on, and if you're casting on 10 stitches like I'm gonna do here, you can say to yourself, boy.

I would really like it if the um if I if I'm gonna pay attention I'm going to make sure that I cast on loosely or I knit loosely but as you go on with your project or if you had to cast on say you're doing a great big shawl or the bottom of a sweater and you had to cast on 50 or 75 or 100 stitches, it's difficult to knit not in your natural rhythm. So if you tend to be a tight knitter if you tend to be. Somebody that has that problem with a tight cast on, you might pay attention for your 1st 15 stitches, but the last 70 are still gonna be too tight. So there are two options. One is take both of your knitting needle tips and cast on to the two of them together.

Now this works with circular needles like I have here. It also works with straight needles. You just the two tips that you have, you could even do this on double pointed if you wanted to, but I'm going to cast on. Now this is the long tail cast on. This is the one I use for a lot of things.

But you can see I'm casting onto two stitches at the same time. And you can see what I did. I just got caught in between the tips. You want to make sure that your two tips are staying together. Because you can see what happened when I wasn't paying attention.

I was reading the computer screen, the yarn got in between the two needlepoints. So when I have as many stitches as I need to have. I'm gonna hold on to one needle tip and pop out the other one. So now I have a nice loose cast on. And I'm not going to have any of that problem with my work pulling in at the bottom.

As an add on to this topic, I want to talk a little bit about stitch markers. Now here's one I got at the regular, you know, at the, at the craft store, and here's my kitty cat one because I love it. If you have to cast on 50, 60, 75, 129, 200 and whatever stitches, it's really hard to count from the beginning to the end and get the same count every time, no matter how experienced you are. So what I often like to do is put a stitch marker every say every 25 stitches or every 30 stitches. It doesn't do anything.

It's not telling me to do anything in the pattern, but if I have a problem, I can narrow down the section that has a problem. I also use stitch markers. I see, again, I told you you're gonna have more than 5 tips. I also use stitch markers if I have, say, a repeat of a stitch pattern that's long, so I have a 12 or a 15 row repeat, and I'm a newer knitter, I might put a stitch marker between every one of those repeats that gives me two things that helps me narrow down my focus and make sure that I'm looking at the right section. But also if I have a mistake, if I have a long piece of knitting and say I have a 12 stitch repeat and there are 10 iterations of that 12 stitch repeat, I can go and look between the stitch markers.

And find the section where the mistake is. If I see 1212, 1212, 1112, 1212, 1212, I don't have to look at the whole row of knitting and figure out where my mistake is so I can go back and fix it. I can narrow down within the number of stitches in my repeat. I can narrow down, find out where my problem is and just work on that one section. So if I'm knitting a lot of stitches.

I are casting on a lot of stitches. Here's 8. I might put my, uh, put my stitch marker on and cast on some more and then put a stitch marker on. And if you don't have a stitch marker around, I have a zillion of them because I, I buy them in bulk whenever I'm at the craft store, but I also like the little cute ones like my kitties here. If I see a stitch marker at a at a yarn show at a fiber show, that's going to be my um.

That's going to be my, uh, my souvenir that I'm going to take home. Uh you can also use, I've used safety pins, I've used the little ring part of binder clips. I've used a contrasting color of yarn and tied a little circle. I know a friend who uses uh twist ties from the bread just because you don't have a stitch marker to hand doesn't mean you don't have something where you can mark off your stitches. I did go on a tangent here.

The other way I wanted to show you. To avoid that too tight cast on. Is to simply get a bigger needle if you are going to knit your project with a size 8 needle like I am here and you know you have a problem with the two tight cast on, go ahead and cast on to the bigger needle. The only trick there is you have to remember to switch when your cast on's done so you can go ahead and cast your stitches right onto your needle, your bigger one. Speaking of tools, and this is just a freebie from me to you if it turns out that you like knitting and why wouldn't you, uh, if it turns out that you think you're going to do a lot of knitting, I really advise saving up if you have to, but finding a needle style that really works for you and investing in an interchangeable knitting needle set because that gives you so many options.

If you're doing a gauge square and you have to change, um, and, and some of them can be quite an investment but I prefer investing in an interchangeable set and there's I'm not talking about any one specific brand there are a million brands, but I find I get more value out of that than having to go to the store and get a different needle every time I need it. That said, I mostly knit on circular needles. You might prefer straight needles and that's OK. So once I have my cast on. To my bigger needle, I don't have to move it to the smaller needle.

I can just knit off or pearl off my first row so I have my smaller needle in my right hand because I'm right handed and I have my big fat needle in my left hand. And again this will also work with straight needles. Uh, so we did have a question. Are these tips useful for continental knitters? Yes, I am an English knitter.

I, uh, the number of people that knit continental that insist that I should learn continental because it's faster, uh, I don't necessarily knit for speed. I enjoy knitting English. I've been knitting English for decades and, and that's what I prefer. You of course can go back and forth or you can decide whether knitting English or knitting continental is better for you. There are, here's my biggest tip there are no knitting police and anybody who tells you that you're, you're doing it this way and it must be wrong.

Forget that we don't need that kind of negativity in our lives. There's no one right or wrong way to do almost anything in this life, but specifically in knitting. If you are comfortable and you are happy with the results that you're getting, close enough. So here I knit off of my big needle. Onto my smaller needle.

Let's put that up on the cable so you can really see it. And you can see I don't have any problems with that cast on drilling in width wise. So those are my two best tricks. To solve a too tight cast on. Uh, what is the different, uh, that's a really good question.

Um, somebody just asked again, not necessarily part of what I was going to do today, but I really, I really love when you guys ask questions because it helps me know what you wanna know. Um, the difference between English and continental, and I won't do a whole thing about it is how you manipulate your yarn. So I am an English knitter. So I hold, I'm right-handed, I hold my yarn in my right hand, and this is the other thing in addition to calling it English people call it throwing. I throw my yarn, I throw my yarn around the knitting needle.

And bring it through So that's English we're throwing. Continental needles and I'm gonna mess this up. I tell you what, but I'm gonna give it a shot. Continental. Continental knitters hold the yarn in their left hand.

They have it over their index finger. And instead of throwing the yarn around the needle they're grabbing it so, uh, in the same way I know I have that twisted there we go in the same way that English knitters are called throwers, continental knitters you'll also find described as pickers because I'm picking the yarn. And bringing it through, picking the yarn and bringing it through and again I'm terrible at this, so if you wanna learn continental knit knitting do not do it off this video um I have gauge problems when I knit Continental. Now I find that most knitters. Prefer the method they learned with.

I don't know who taught you, if you learned from grandma or if you learned at the yarn store or if you learned from one of our videos, um, you tend to knit the way your instructor knits. That said, we want happy comfortable knitters and we want happy joyous knitting experiences. So if you try one method and you're not comfortable, maybe look up a video and give the other version a shot, see if that's more comfortable for the way your hands work, the way your brain. Works everybody has a preference and again I know those continental knitters always say they're faster and they may be in the long run but I think that you should knit the way you feel comfortable and I feel very, very strongly about that so I'm going back to my English knitting, uh, to, uh, go on to my next tip which is reading your knitting if you can learn to read your knitting. This is a wonderful, a wonderful thing for you to do.

Let me just set this aside. And grab my pink, my pink here. So there's two expressions you'll see frequently as you explore more written knitting patterns. One is reading your knitting, which is what we're talking about. But the other concept is Knit the knits and pearl the pearls.

Somebody instead of writing out a whole row will say on this row, knit the knits and pearl the pearls and if you don't know what that means you can be a little confused. So this is what we talk about when we talk about reading our knitting. If I look at this stitch right here. I can see a loop on the top. And a little V at the bottom.

So we'll call this a V. that is a knit stitch. That is a stitch that I wish to knit if you're working in stock and net, if you're doing different stitch patterns, that's a whole another issue. But again, particularly on lace patterns, you'll see written instructions that say knit the knits and pearl the pearls, and I just found out recently that that is confusing to a lot of people. So I had little V's at the bottom of all those stitches, so I knew that I wanted to knit them because I'm working in stock and net.

Now when I get here. I don't see a little V. I see this little horizontal line right up next to the knitting needle to my left hand knitting needle, we call that a pearl bump. So if I see a pearl bump and I'm doing knit the knits and pearl the pearls, I know I wanna pearl those stitches. So I'm gonna bring the yarn through between the needles.

Remember, we don't want any accidental yarn overs and I'm going to pearl my pearls. Once you get into the habit of really looking at what you're doing. The other thing I've noticed, there's a project I'm working on, here's my V. I'm gonna knit. There's a project I'm working on in my personal life that is a wildly complicated lace pattern.

And I'm a good lace knitter. I don't feel like I'm an excellent lace litter knitter, but I noticed because I can read my knitting if I'm knitting along and I can see, it's almost like a glitch. It doesn't look right. It doesn't flow, the pattern doesn't flow. I can tell very quickly that I have made a mistake and I can fix the mistake while I only have to rip back a few stitches.

Ripping out lace knitting is unpleasant at best. So here's some pearls. So I see the bump I'm gonna pearl. But when you're doing a texture pattern in particular. And it tells you to knit the knits and pearl the pearls.

Then, uh, this is, this is what we're after. Uh, we had a guest just comment. I'm a left-handed continental knitter, but I use English when I knit right handed. Um, that's actually I'm really impressed by that. I don't know that I could do it, but one thing I wanna tell you, you know what you would be really good at is color work.

Because a lot of people when they're doing stranded knitting or fair Ile knitting will hold one strand in their left hand and one strand in their right hand and go that way again, that's not how I do it. I'm straight English knitting all the way, but I know a lot of color work knitters that work with yarn in both hands. I'll have color A in one hand, color B in the other, and they find that to give them a smoother experience. I bet you it'd be really, really good at color work knitting. So now the, uh, while we're talking about reading your knitting, I just briefly wanted to mention yarn overs.

There's a yarn over right there and I just said be careful when you are. Bringing your yarn from the back to the work of the work to the front of the work or from the front of the work to the back of the work because it's really easy to accidentally go over the needle instead of through and then you give yourself a yarn over which is an extra stitch you give yourself an extra stitch when you don't want one but in this case I'm gonna make a yarn over I'm going to do a little decrease and I wanted to just this is this little bonus tip. A lot of times when I put my work down, if there is a stitch pattern that has visual interest on both sides, if I'm not, if I'm knitting stock and that, this is the right side, this is the wrong side. I don't really have to think about it that much. However, Sometimes if you have a lot of stuff going on on both sides and you put your work down, it's really hard to remember if you're working on a right side row or a wrong side row.

And so one of the things I like to do if I have a pattern with yarovs. Again, bonus tip, you're getting way more than I'm putting my finger here right under the yarn over. If there's nothing under it. Then that was a row with a yarn over most often a right side row, but not always, but most often that's a right side row. So I know that my next row is going to be a wrong side row.

Now, if I'm knitting the nets and pearling the pearls. Again, the pattern would tell me how to address a yarn over when I came to it. But you see, there's nothing under here. It's just the yarn over, so I know I haven't worked into that yarn over, so I can go ahead and put whatever stitch in there. That I needed to put.

All of that said, If I picked my work up. And I couldn't remember if I was on the right side or the wrong side. And I looked for that yarn over, you see that yarn over has been worked into. You can see. That there's another strand of yarn in there so I know I've already worked into that yarn over so then that tells me that I've completed a a wrong side row again usually, uh, I know that I've completed a wrong side row and the next row that I need to knit is probably a right side row.

Oh, we have a really great question about tools. I know we were talking about tools. It says do better needles really make a difference? I'm going to say this. I think so.

I think better tools in general make a difference, and here's why I think that I think. That you don't have to go out in the world and spend a million dollars when you are learning a new craft. I do think that if you purchase the cheapest. I mean cheapest if you, if you purchase the lowest quality materials that are available to you because you were concerned that you're gonna spend too much money on a hobby that you don't like, then I think that that experience may not be enjoyable for you and you may like knitting you just may not like it on low end tools and yarn so. Do I think everything has to be a million dollars?

No. And I'm not getting into the whole debate on, you know, people are like, oh, acrylic yarn is the devil. Real knitters don't use acrylic yarn. I don't believe that for a minute. But do I like.

Brand name acrylic yarns better than the ones from the dollar store or labels I've never heard of. Yeah, I do. They're, they're made better, they're easier to work with. If they're easier to work with, you're gonna have a more enjoyable experience. Now the thing with knitting needles.

I better in one knitter's mind is not necessarily better in another knitter's mind. It depends what kind of knitting you do. It depends on what feels comfortable to you. There are wooden ones that are bamboo and and raw. There's the bamboo with the finish on them.

There these are, I don't even know what these are. I think these are knitter's ride carbons. I have all the needles. Um, there are metal ones you might find that you have a preference that you prefer metal needles or you prefer bamboo needles. It might have to do with the project.

If I'm knitting acrylic yarn in a worsted way, I don't care what knitting needles I have, whichever, whichever ones I picked up. That's fine with me. I didn't, I don't go crazy, but if I'm knitting lace, I want a super sharp point. I want to be able to really dig into those stitches, so I want a lace point on my knitting needles. There's a difference between a lace point and a standard point.

This is a standard point needle. I might want bamboo. If the yarn that I'm working with is super slippery, if it has a lot of ray on, if it's fuzzy, if I'm, you know, a few projects into my knitting journey and I'm using a fancy yarn, I want something we'll say it's grabbier, we'll say, oh we want something we want a grabby needle for that. We don't want the needles to fall off the stitches. Some people don't like metal needles because they're slick.

Some people love metal needles because they're slick. So it's not for yarn. I think you can move a little farther up the food chain and have a more enjoyable experience. I think there is such a thing as bad yarn, uh, for knitting needles, it really, it's so much personal preference and again I understand if you're knitting your 1st 5 projects and you need 5 different sizes of knitting needles, you know, you might feel like you're just spending a bunch of money, but pick the needle that goes with your project and if you find a knitting needle that feels good in your hands that you like the point. That's where you wanna invest your early money later on if you need lace needles, if you need fancy needles, if you need wildly specific needles for a wildly specific project, you know, then go for that because the other thing is if you knit on uh circular needles like I often do, you also have to uh adjust for.

Cable length. I want a 16 inch cable if I'm knitting a hat. I want a 29 inch or a 36 inch cable if I'm knitting a sweater, and this is why I was talking earlier about interchangeables but apparently I could talk about knitting needles for 20 minutes and I don't want to do that. So let's move on a little bit. Uh, the other thing I wanna talk about whether you're changing color, putting your work down because you're done with your knitting session.

Or having to join a new skein of yarn. Unless the house is on fire, you really wanna get to the end of your row or your round if you're working in the round and make all of your changes there. You don't want new yarn in the middle of a row because it might distort the stitch a little bit. You don't want to put your work down with your needles in the middle of the row. If you can't come back to it for a week, that stitch will distend.

It will pull out of shape because there's been too much pressure on it. So at any point. And you have to stop your knitting or you're ready to stop your knitting for the day. Try and get to the end of the row or the end of the round. The last thing I wanna show you is, here, let's go back to the blue, I think.

Um, I'm gonna talk just a little bit about bind offs, and I know. That there are a million bind offs in the same way that there are a million cast-ons, but the one I use most often. Is a standard. I'm trying to think here for a minute, um, is a standard, uh, pearl pearl pearl wise bind off or a knit wise bind off? I'm just gonna quick gonna get to the end of this row and we're gonna do a quick knit wise bind off.

But one of the perils of the knit wise bind off, and again, I use it all the time, I use it for a lot of projects, but one of the perils of it is that last stitch, by gosh, always kind of stretches out and looks goofy. And I don't like the look of it, and this is a little tip that I learned. And it makes my bind offs look so much neater at the end, so it's the last tip I wanna share with you and uh let's see if you have any more questions now is a great time. To ask, so I'm just doing a wise bind off. And, uh, we had, uh, Patsy from Texas, I think, said she started knitting on plastic and after determining that, yes, she wanted to be a knitter, she now owns high quality, no more needle breaking or cheap metal paint wearing away.

So you have to kind of figure out. What your budget is and then go from there. But if you are in an area where there is a stitch group. Ask people if you can try their needles. I bet they will let you.

If you can go to a yarn store and they sell several different styles or brands. You know, ask people. I bet they'll let you try them out or it can give you some guidance on what might work best for your specific project. Again, the hilarious thing at my house, my house is full of, uh, Knitting needles, crochet hooks, and sewing machines. So for something like this, again, I'm knitting in worsted weight acrylic.

I just grabbed the first needles I saw that were the right size. There are specific instances where I have specific needles for specific projects, but I am a big interchangeable fan. So when we're getting up to the end of our bind off. So I'm knitting one and passing the first one over. Um, here's a tip.

You wanna give just a little bit of attention here. You wanna hold on to that yarn to make sure it pop doesn't pop off. um, but what happens here, I'll show, I'll show you the bad way when you do this at the end. And finish it off See how you get a little gap, right? You get a little gap right here because that last stitch distorts a little.

So when you get to the last here, don't look, I'm just taking that out. When you get to the last stitch on your bind off. Bring the, my goodness, we are having a day, OK. We have the last stitch on our bind off. I'm bringing it from the left hand needle to the right hand needle.

And I'm going to go behind it, and I'm going to grab the strand right under it. Now I'm gonna put both of those back on the left hand needle. And then for my last knit one pass one over, I'm gonna knit those two together. And then pass my slip stitch over. And what it does Is it tightens up this last little bind off right here.

And you don't get that big dog ear that you get for uh when you when you just do that last one regularly. I'm gonna answer one more question before we go. Do you ever get to knit just for fun or is it all work these days? Um, I knit socks for fun. I really like to knit socks.

I very rarely knit socks for work. That's not my, my general area of expertise. So if you catch me hanging out someplace and having a, having a, a nice coffee or sitting on somebody's patio or at a stitch group, usually I'll have a, a pair of socks in my hand and I'll be knitting away on my socks. Thank you very much for asking that. Yes, I still love to knit.

So thank you so much for joining me. We have all of our, uh, wonderful questions answered. I'm so glad you hung out with me today and I hope to see you again real soon. Once again, I am Mary Beth Temple. Thanks for hanging out.