Knitting Essentials 1 DVD

Make friends with your stitches and enhance your knitting experience.

This DVD is part one of Lucy Neatby's Knitting Essentials series. Part two is available here.

Here are skills that knitters should never leave home without. Everything you ever wanted to know (and more) begins with Knitting Essentials 1. It contains knitter's-eye-view shots, accompanied by Lucy's informal commentary and unique teaching methods on how to master techniques, why you might wish to use them and what exactly is going on. Control your cast-ons, try innovative bind-off methods, make increases and decreases in more than one way, apply finishing basics, pick up tips on reading your knitting and discover the hidden secrets of contented stitches.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, best selling author of \"At Knit's End\", \"Yarn Harlot\" and \"Knitting Rules!\" writes, \"These are brilliant. Chock full of reassuring common sense and clever short cuts, \"

A Knitter's Companion is what every knitter has always wanted, Lucy Neatby, warm, intelligent and funny, now forced to live in your living room.\" bind offs, cast ons, increases, decreases, finishing basics, useful miscellanea, odds and knitting in ends, rescue remedies, gauge matters, the contented stitch.

DVD Topics Include:

Bind-Off Methods

• Temporary
• Regular
• Regular method using a crochet hook
• The last stitch conundrum!
• Regular for rib
• Three-needle
• Three-needle to match vertical columns
• Modified Conventional (knitwise)

Cast-On Methods

• Loop
• Long-Tail / Continental with two hands
• Adusting the width of your cast-on edge
• Adjusting the tension of your cast-on stitches
• Looking after your tail yarn
• Long-Tail / Continental one-handed
• Long-Tail variation for an extra strong elastic edge
• Long-Tail used as a provisional edge
• Knitted
• Cable

Decreases

• Right-slanting (k2t) - ref Reading the knitting
• Left-slanting (ssk)
• Ssk versus s1-kw-psso
• Left-slanting (ssk) variations
• Fully-fashioned decreases for easy seaming
• Double decreases; three stitches become one (S2t kw-k1-psso), s1kw-k2t-psso
• Kindness to stitches outside the decreases
• A comparison of decreases both focussed and scattered
• Reading Decreases

Finishing Basics

• Tidying up the junk
• Mattress Stitch basics
• Knitting (picking) up new stitches
• Three-needle Bind off for shoulders

Gauge Matters

• The three ways to change your stitch size:
• Needle size
• Yarn size
• Number of stitches

Increases

• Right slanting increase - a subtle right-leaning increase
• Left slanting increase - a subtle left-leaning increase
• Make 1, and make 1 with a twist
• Reading your increases

Useful Miscellanea

• Coil-less pins
• Yarn butterflies
• Running Yarn marker / Knitting in the round on dpns
• Slip knot
• Setting up a swift
• Ball winder and centre-pull balls
• Threading a needle from the extracted section of ends at edges
• Comparison of right and left-hand yarn manipulation
• Purling manipulating the yarn with the left hand

Odds and Knitting in Ends

• Knitting in a tail
• Tail neatening whilst purling
• The balancing act!
• Ends in the round and darning needle skills
• Ends at the edges of a Mattress stitch seam
• Splicing and spit splicing
• Cheering up unhappy stitches by diagonal darning
• Diagram of unhappy stitches

Rescue Remedies

• Laddering back knits and purls
• Ripping back wholesale
• Ripping back slowly

The Secrets of Contented Stitches

• The Contented stitch
• Hills stitches and valley loops
• Balancing stitches
• The facts of life; how stitches are made
• Stitch mount and the significance of the direction of throwing the yarn around the needle
• Factors in controlling stitch size: tension and angle
• Stitch abuse and the unhappy edge stitches
• Slipping stitches and stitch mount
• Twisted stitches
• Reading the knitting