Knitting wisdom

Little_Vics

There are LOADS of patterns on ravelry.com for free, and you can filter on ease. I'd suggest starting with something smaller and simpler (like a kids scarf) until you get used to knitting - good luck!

UserX

That's a beautiful throw but a very fine yarn. I second what Little Vics suggested - join Ravelry (it's free!) and have a hunt through the patterns there.

To knit something that big, you'll definitely need to do it on circular needles - good luck looking in charity shops BTW, as decent needles seem few & far between and I've never seen a pair of good circs in one.

GreenFairy

Ravelry has some awesome stuff alright - it's a fantastic resource. For a recap on knitting basics and improving your skills I'd heartily recommend checking the videos on knittinghelp.com. They're in UK/Euro and U.S. versions so no problems with terminology or the like.

Alison_Funnell

meritaten wrote: »

and avoid Utube tutorials from America! they use totally different terms from English, or rather UK knitting! the methods are the same but the names of things are different! Their needle sizes are different and they use different ways of identifying yarn. so if you learned by using 5.5 needles for 'worsted' yarn and needed 2000 yards - you wouldn't be able to find this in uk - instead you would want 5mm needles and Aran yarn and ...............oh - I don't know how to convert yards into Grams! see?

Most yarn sold in the UK also has it's yardage on the band.

sketchingkari

What a beautiful blanket that is! I agree though, it looks machine knitted. Cables are easy once you get the hang of them, but I would recommend getting back to grips with knitting first, fiddling with a cable needle can be a bit tricky

Best way to get back into it, and end up with a lovely warm blanket, would be to grab a pair of 4mm needles and some cheap acrylic DK yarn (my charity shop sells it for £1.19 per 100g ball) in some colours you like and start knitting squares, in basic garter stitch (knit every row)

Then just sew the squares together.

I like to do corner to corner squares, there's no casting off then, you just cast on 3 stitches and each row you knit the first stitch, increase into the second stitch, then knit to the end of the row, keep doing that until you have the width of square you want, 60 stitches is a good size, then for each row after that you knit the first stitch, then knit 2 stitches together, then knit to the end.

Do that until you have three stitches, cut the tail and thread it through and your square is done!

Be careful though, knitting is addictive

westcoastscot

Wonder how they manage it for £65 with wool/angora/nylon yarn?:sad:

I think if I were a beginner I'd make something similar but with squares of different stitch patterns, starting with the simplest and knitting 12 inch squares, then as your skill evolves you can have different cable squares?

If you really want to make a fully cable one I'd knit long scarf-shapes and join them together to make a blanket.

WCS

gsymoo

Hi, a good book for a beginner is The Knitter's Bible: The Complete Handbook for Creative Knitters [Paperback]. It covers all knitting techniques including cable. A blanket would be very ambitious as a first project. If you like cable patterns you could always try a cushion cover first, it would give you an idea if you'd be able to do a blanket and wouldn't take much wool. Good luck!

studentsaver166

I knew I'd come to the right place for advice!

You are all wonderful. Thank you so much for all the tips so far. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on some needles and yarn this weekend so I can start practising some squares