knitting, posts by tag: read me first - LiveJournal

I've recently started up on Ravelry and I agree with the people who think it's pretty darned cool. But if you're already on it, you don't need to read a pile of posts telling you something you already know -- and if you're in the long list of people still waiting for their invites, it sometimes feels like everyone's at the cool kids table but you. So!

In an attempt to avoid a flood of "I'm so-and-so on Ravelry" posts, we've decided to create this post where you can comment with your Ravelry ID and help people link up how you are here with who you are there. Any future posts that are solely "I'm on Ravelry now" with no other knitting content will have a comment made linking to this post and then be deleted.

On the other end, I created this group on Ravelry that y'all can join to identify yourself as an LJ knitter.
Thanks for your understanding!

Looking for other knitters in your area? Taking a trip and want to ask the locals where to find some yarn? Here's a list of knitting communities dedicated to cities, states, countries... If you know of one to add to the list (or run a community that is on this list and prefer that it not be), comment here or drop the moderators an e-mail.

International:
stitch_n_bitch Brisbane, Australia
hot_knitters Sydney, Australia
hali_craft Halifax, NS Canada
vic_crafts Victoria, BC Canada
nordic_knitters Nordic Knitters
brit_knits United Kingdom
ed_stitchnbitch Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
stitchnbitchgla Glasgow, Scotland, UK
knitting_es knitting in Spanish


United States:
la_knitters Los Angeles, CA
snbnewlondon New London, CT
beachknitters FL
knit_chicago Chicago, IL
bloomingtonsnb Bloomington, IN
nola_stitch New Orleans, LA
mdknitters MD
wickedknitting Boston, MA
a2_ypsi_snb Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti, MI
minnknit MN
nj_knits NJ
cny_knits Central NY
nyc_knits New York, NY
15501_knitting Durham/Chapel Hill/Carrboro, NC
knit_me_baby Portland, OR
pdx_knitters Portland, OR
phillyknitters Philadelphia, PA
swpa_fiberarts Pittsburgh, PA/Tri-state area
snbprov Providence, RI
snbchattanooga Chattanooga, TN
nashville_knits Nashville, TN
nightknitters Dallas, TX
houston_knit Houston, TX
rvaknits Richmond, VA
cloudcityknitty Seattle, WA
stitchybitches Seattle, WA (Capitol Hill)
mkeknitting Milwaukee, WI
US Regional:
ne_fiber New England
westernfiber Rocky Mountains
pacific_fiberWest Coast

Outside of LJ-land, try Knitting Meetups or check this list of knitting groups.
Some Yahoo! groups:
Hartford County, CT
New Haven, CT
Richmond, VA
Etc.
Pittsburgh, PA

This post is meant for the memories, and as such, I'm disabling comments. I will post another post immediately after this for any comments or questions you have. Thanks!

How to use Google to Find Cool Stuff
by terriblebeast

It can get quite frustrating for regular readers of this community to find the same old requests and questions posted over and over again, especially when most of them can be resolved through the use of a decent search engine like Google. Your particular question may have been asked, answered and debated over a dozen times before, and there's no point in reinventing the wheel when it's already been preserved in the digital ether.

Before getting a bit trigger-happy and posting your question on knitting, try searching online first. If you're unsure of how to go about this, read this nifty Google primer to get acquainted with the basics of crafting your query. Using special characters like +, - or quotation marks can help you fine-tune your query further. Quotation marks are especially helpful when you want to search an entire phrase like "cabled sweater" and don't want to get a hundred results containing separate instances of "cabled" and "sweater" out of the context you want.

Eg.
E.g. query: I want to knit a shrug! Anyone know where I can find a free
pattern online?

Answer: Type "shrug" + "free pattern" into the Google search box and voila! If a search for a free pattern you want yields no results, it's a good bet that it doesn't exist and you may have to turn to physical matter like books and magazines.

Want to figure out how many yards of yarn you've salvaged from that sweater from Goodwill? Try searching for "measuring yarn" or "estimating yarn", or even "yardage recycled sweater". Don't know why your stockinette curls? Search for "stockinette curl". Try different phrases! Mix and match! Use quotation marks or go commando!

Recently, I wanted to try making this celebrity look-a-like shawl (okay, it's a copy of the one Jessica Simpson wore on MTV's Newlyweds). The yarn the pattern called for, Noro's Hana Silk, is very pricey, to say the least. I wanted to find out if there was a cheaper alternative. Before I ran to the knitters on this wonderful community for suggestions, I did a quick search on Google for "similar to hana silk" (without the quotation marks, because that exact phrase yielded no results). Just as I thought, I found that the question had been asked before, in a crochet community and even in our own knitting board.

So embrace the search engine goodness, even if you think your question hasn't been covered before. If we can create and post to a LiveJournal, a simple Google search string shouldn't be beyond us. It hardly takes any time at all, in most cases, and you'll be doing curmudgeons like me a huge favor by showing that you've done at least the basic legwork yourself before you ask for help.

I often see people posting their FO pictures with something like "warning, large images" - and truthfully, some images are so large that it's impossible to see the loveliness that is the entire FO on even a decent-sized monitor, or over a slow connection.

This isn't a complaint, but it struck me that some of you may not know how to resize images, or may think you need fancy software to do it.

So I dug out a short tutorial I prepared a while back for some of my colleagues who like to send photos via e-mail, and dusted it off. You can find it here. Six easy steps, using nothing but Windows Paint. Use it if you think it might be handy.

I'm linking to it instead of putting it behind a cut tag - because some of the images are pretty big. (-:

OK, I can't tell how many times we've managed to decipher this problem in the last month, but it's always buried down in the comments, so I think it needs to be a post on its own.

The YO is just the action of making a loop of yarn around the needle between two stitches (rather than through a stitch as is the usual way). It is not "bring the yarn to the front and then knit the next stitch," no matter what Stitch 'n Bitch says. If the stitch after the YO is intended to be a knit stitch, then yes, that is how you do a yarn over, counting that knit stitch as the first knit stitch of the following instructions. Examples:

k3, yo, k2tog will only use up five existing stitches on your left needle and you will end up with five stitches on your right needle. You'll knit 3 stitches, bring the yarn to the front, and then knit the two following stitches together.

k2tog, yo, k3 will also use up and create exactly five stitches; you'll knit 2 together, bring the yarn to the front, then knit 3 stitches.

p2tog, yo, p3 again, five stitches. Purl two together, take the yarn to the back over the top of the needle and then bring it back to the front between the needles (for a complete wrap of the right needle) and then purl the following three stitches. Not a knit stitch to be found.

(edited to add: I originaly described it as "making a stitch out of nothing," which I agree wasn't very well put. I hope the new wording is more helpful)

From Annie Modesitt's Blog:

Thou shalt distribute the stitches to allow a matching number of knit and purl stitches in any two rows
(when viewed from the right side)

Further details can be found here.

Hallebloodylujah. Someone has explained it.

due to lots and LOTS of posts amounting to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about various topics from "why does my knitting curl" to "i want an easy pattern for FOO" or "there was a post last week about BAR" i thought i'd put this information out there, possibly for the memories:
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