Fiber Test

An easy test to figure out if your yarn is animal, plant or synthetic, pour a small amount of bleach in a small bowl or custard cup. Place a length of your yarn into the bleach. It will either:

· bubble and dissolve which means it is an animal fiber and will felt
· the color starts to bleach out but the fiber does not dissolve, it’s a plant fiber like cotton
· the yarn floats in the bleach and doesn’t change, it is an acrylic yarn
· the yarn bubbles but doesn’t disappear, it is probably a wool-acrylic blend

Row Gauge

If you’ve made your swatch and have the right stitch gauge but have trouble obtaining the right row gauge, it could be because of your knitting style. Continental (picking style) knitting produces a slightly shorter stitch than English (throwing style) so it would be good to know both styles of knitting depending on your project.

Cables While Knitting in the Round

If you are knitting a cabled pattern in the round, it’s sometimes difficult to see/know when you are on a cable round as opposed to when you are knitting back and forth. There are a few tricks to being able to count the rounds which I’ve illustrated below.



This is my preferred method and what I think is the easy method.

Smooth Circular Joins

One way to make a smooth join when knitting in the round is to cast on 1 extra stitch. When joining the circle, knit the first and last stitches together.