7 Helpful Knitting Tips & DIY Ideas

Did you receive too many drink holders from Christmas? Put them to good use! This 24-ounce tumbler makes a great yarn bowl DIY alternative. It's a good size for a skein of yarn and the mouth can be used to draw out the yarn.

Another do-it-yourself yarn bowl for knitting would be this colander. They’re especially useful if working with mini skeins or multiple skeins of yarn.
The holes will help keep your yarn from getting tangled. Just be careful with metal colanders as some have rough edges and can snag your yarn.

On the go and need a quick DIY knitting marker? Well, I love stitch markers, I love to use them, to buy them. And of course, I have loads of them. But then suddenly I don’t have any. Does this happen to you to?
No worries, I bet you are surrounded by potential stitch markers if you take a look around your house. Paper clips, safety pins, rubber bands, hair ties, and loops of scrap yarn, they all do the work for you. Try using your earrings because, we all know, knitting waits for no one.

When you learn to knit and purl stitches, the first pattern you will learn is a rib stitch pattern. It is a combination of knit and purl stitches. The most commonly used ribbing is 1×1 (alternating 1 knit and 1 purl stitches) and 2×2 (alternating 2 knit and 2 purl stitches), but other combinations are widely spread. If you want the ribbing to hold shape better and look neater, use a slightly smaller needle size than for the rest of the knitting.

Do you hate too many calculations in knitting? This hack will help you!
There is a consistent pattern for sleeve increases (same for decreases).
1. If the length of the arm is 52-60cm (20.4” – 23.6”) at normal fullness increases are in every 6th row
2. Length of the arm is 48-51cm (18.9” – 20”) at normal fullness then increases are made differently once 6th row and after 4th row alternating increases every 6th and 4th rows.
3. If arms are short and full 48-51cm (18.9” – 20”) then increase every 4th row.
In case you get the desired amount of stitches but didn’t get the right length, then continue knitting another 5-6cm (2 inches) without increases until the desired length. Remember to write it down and knit the second sleeve the same way.

Don’t know how about you, but when I knit stockinette, I usually get sloppy last stitches at the end of the knit row. It has all to do with tension since I am a continental knitter, purl rows are looser and knit rows tighter. To have ideal stockinette, I learned to adjust the tension. Purl rows I knit tighter and knit rows – not too tight.
The solution to getting rid of a sloppy edge
1. At the beginning of the purl row, purl 3-4 stitches tighter than usual;
2. At the beginning of the knit row, knit 3-4 stitches tighter than usual;
This is very important to get edges as neat as possible, especially when seaming parts to get a nice-looking seam.

When knitting with more than one color it can be a bit messy to hold your yarn strands in the right positions. A yarn guide can help you with that. The yarn guide is a ring that you put on your pointing finger, the ring has two or more loops that can hold one strand each. This makes keeps you from mixing up the order of your yarn strands. It’s important to pick the colors the same way thru-out a project. How you wrap the yarn strands determines which is going to be the dominant color.