My knitting has … let’s call it an “organic” texture.
Although I’ve been knitting since 2012, I haven’t actually focused very much on improving the quality of my craft recently. I learned fair isle a few years ago, but other than that, I think my ability is basically the same as it was 8 years ago - despite being fairly prolific in my output.
I consider myself fairly advanced - I can knit lace, fair isle, cables - and ladder down to fix a mistake many rows back too. I’ve made blankets, socks, soft toys, scarves, and jumpers galore. But my ribbing is sloppy, and you can plainly see where I’ve woven in my ends. I’m noticing uneven tension and fit issues - garments too big, too small, or too imperfect. Knitting doesn’t have to be perfect, I know - but I feel like my skills have stagnated, and I could be better than this if I just applied myself a little better.
So here are some things I’d like to work on:
- Ribbing tension. My purls are looser than my knits, so I need to learn to purl slightly tighter.
- Fair isle tension at the joins of double pointed needles. I just need to pay more attention as I go.
- Fit:
- Measure the garment as it comes together, and make changes if necessary rather than just resignedly carrying on to the end.
- Don’t skip the gauge swatch. I stopped doing this for a while, trying to do it by eye - but my eye isn’t good enough. I need to get the ruler out and measure.
- Weaving in ends as I go. Until recently I’ve just left my ends loose and woven them in with a darning needle at the end, but that’s completely demoralising. I’ve started using a new technique for weaving as I go, but it messes with my tension, so I’d like to work on that.
- Holding yarn in both hands for fair isle. I can’t do this at all, which makes 1x1 fair isle super tiring on the hands. This might involve actually learning to knit continental - we’ll see!
If you’ve got any tips on improving the quality of your knitting, I’d love to hear them. Please drop me a line!