Garnstudio
http://www.garnstudio.com/This website has some awesome patterns on it, the only problem is that all the patterns are written in squished up writing and you need a ruler to follow each line. I copy the pattern into a word document and separate each instruction to make it easier to follow. I made a men's Norwegian jumper from this site - it turned out really good but the pattern was incorrect on the sleeves and I didn't realise until I was knitting it and it was a big mess until I sorted it out and corrected the mistakes. I had to undo half the knitting on the sleeves and knit them again AND I HATE UNDOING KNITTING!!!!
I also made three pairs of mittens from this site, one pair I gave to my partner's mum and the other two I gave to my aunty to sell on her website.
Unfortunately, as usual, I didn't take photos of all the mittens I made. I always forget to do things like that until it's too late or I've worn or used whatever it is so much that they're trashed. The above mittens I gave to my aunty for her website. http://www.merakcrafts.com/ I don't think they've been put up yet and I wouldn't expect them to sell anyway. They're knitted from some Aussie merino wool that I got from Spotlight or Lincraft or somewhere.
Here is the pattern in case anyone wants to make them. They're fun to make and fairly easy.
Here is a dress I made from a pattern on the garnstudio website. I bought some big bags of bamboo blend wool from Spotlight, 20 balls for $10 or something ridiculous like that. I bought a bag of pink and a bag of purple and then made this dress in stripes. I have a tendency to eat chocolate while I'm knitting (I have a tendency to eat chocolate while I'm doing EVERYTHING) and I must have dropped some on the dress while I was knitting it and it melted and it got a big funny looking stain right on the crotch/stomach/bum area. I washed it out but it's sort of stained right into all the fibres and gah!!! I don't think there's a difference between the front of the dress and the back so I just turn it around and wear the stain where I like! It's a fashion statement people!
Knitty
Knitty is one of those website that I always go to in the hope that I'll find something I want to make but get discouraged by the technical terms, get discouraged by the awesome product photography, crack the shits and leave. It doesn't matter what pattern you look at on there, the final product is always modelled by...well, a model. Someone who's all beautiful and standing in some awesome scenery with wind artfully blowing their hair and the jumper or hat or shawl (usually a shawl, I've never seen so many shawls in my entire life) flapping gently in the wind. And then I look at it and think, "Why don't my pictures turn out like that?" Because I'm not a model, that's why! Just look at the picture of me in the dress above! I'm standing next to one of the most bland houses in the entire universe! And it doesn't matter if the person is not model-looking, they could be an ageing hippy with grey dreadlocks, unwashed armpits and the faint smell of patchouli lingering around their nether regions, they still look like a freakin' model! What the hell!?
Not only that, but the patterns are freakishly difficult. You know you're not going to be able to knit something when it starts off like this:
Slip the next two stiches onto the right needle as though to knit. Holding the yarn in your left hand (this is where you start to sweat when they tell you how to hold the goddamn wool) bring the left hand needle up to your eye. Slowly push it into your eye and twist. Once blood is running down your face and you feel your eyeball skewered firmly onto the needle, slowly bring down again. Cook over a low flame, rotating every few minutes to achieve a nice brown crackly flesh. Knit to the end of row.
"Knit to the end of row." Do all this impossible stuff that doesn't make any sense, and then knit to the end of the row. Simple. How can you not understand the instructions you halfwit dinosaur!
The reason I like looking on knitty.com is because all those patterns are written by people like you or me, except better people, smarter people, people that we can only aspire to be. They've been knitting for at least 500 years and experimented and made mistakes (I can assume they've made mistakes, nobody would ever bloody admit to it) and now they can write a whole pattern in technical terms. When I write a pattern it reads something like this:
Knit a lot until your hands are sore. Wait for a bit and then knit a bit more. (heh, that rhymes) then somehow you need to decrease by 30 stitches; you could probably knit 2 together every third stitch, that's what I did, except at the end when I realised I had to decrease 3 more stitches so I quickly did them all together...oh shit...that looks crap, doesn't matter, continue on as if nothing is wrong.
But knitty.com does inspire me to knit and I check it out every few months. You should too.
Knitpicks
I always go on knitpicks.com if only to check out what new yarn and pretty needles they have on their banner thing on the front page. A few months ago I decided to knit the monkey toy for my sister (see previous post: http://thewoollyjumper.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/strawberry-booties-and-spider-monkey.html). I really wanted to knit the Mr Foster monkey pattern on the knitpicks website. I had previously tried to order yarn from knitpicks but they wouldn't deliver to Australia (damn you!) but I thought they would at least let me buy and download an e-book. Yeah right! I still had to enter shipping information even though it was only to download a book and because I live in Australia they wouldn't let me download it. Sigh. So that's why I knitted a spider monkey instead.
They have lots of free patterns though. Once upon a time, a few years ago, or maybe 6 years ago, my mother wanted everyone to quickly use up all our internet data in one night before we lost it all, so in my infinite wisdom, I decided to download all the free knitting patterns I could from knitpicks.com because of course knitting patterns are gigantic downloads and would use up a lot of internet data (I'm being sarcastic in case you didn't realise). Anyway, I've ended up with lots of patterns like the candleflame shawl (http://www.knitpicks.com/patterns/Candleflame_Shawl_Pattern__D50465222.html) and crochet market bags and stuff like that. Never made anything though. Probably because they're free and they're written out all nicely and I can't knit anything unless it's a huge trial and I want to kill myself half way through.
I would really like to buy some of their pretty knitting needles though.
No comments:
Post a Comment