Wel­come back to the loom-knit-along mitered square blan­ket project! :D

In this post we knit a sec­ond square while join­ing it to the pre­vi­ous one. Every square on the very first row of the blan­ket will be made this way. You can make the row as long as you want. My blan­ket is 10 squares wide, and it’s 39″. 

First, let’s ori­ent our­selves. We will put the loops on one side of the first square onto 12 pegs of the loom, as illus­trat­ed in the pic­ture below. The red-dot­ted stitch­es will go on the red-dot­ted pegs.

With the right side of the square fac­ing the inside of the loom, start by putting the first stitch at the top of the square onto the marked peg. For the fol­low­ing stitch­es, use the loom pick to pick up the hor­i­zon­tal strand of yarn between the purl bumps and place it onto the peg, like so…

Con­tin­ue putting a loop on each peg until you reach the oth­er cor­ner of the square and each of the 12 pegs have a loop on it. It will look like this.

Then, go to the first peg of the loom, and cast on the 11 pegs that don’t have loops on them with a new colour for your new square (my sec­ond square is yellow).

When you get to the first peg with a loop of the pre­vi­ous square on it (the marked peg), e‑wrap, then knit off the loop from the pre­vi­ous square.

Con­tin­ue until the end of row. And that’s it! You’ve cast on a con­join­ing square! :D

Knit the rest of the square the same way as the first square. For con­ve­nience, I’ll paste the pat­tern below but there are pho­tos in the blog post that might help if you’re hav­ing trouble.

Row 1: Purl (here’s a video of purl­ing) to the marked peg, e‑wrap knit the marked peg, purl to end. (Note in the pic­ture that the last peg of the loom is emp­ty — we only use 23 pegs of the loom.) Beware not to make the stitch­es too tight.

Row 2: Move the loop on the peg to the left of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Now the marked peg has 3 loops on it. (Always move the loop on the left first, then the one on the right, so it looks consistent.) 

Move the loop on the peg to the left of the now emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg. Keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the right until you reach the begin­ning of the row.

E‑wrap and knit off each peg until you reach the marked peg. E‑wrap the marked peg, knit off all three bot­tom loops on the peg (I pre­fer knit­ting them off one at a time, it’s easier).

You will now have an emp­ty peg to the right of the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg, e‑wrap the peg and knit off. Then keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the left and e‑wrap and knit off until you reach the end of row. I find it eas­i­er to do this with the loom sit­ting flat on a surface.

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until you have 3 stitch­es left. Purl the 3 stitch­es. Place the stitch on the left and stitch on the right onto the mid­dle peg, e‑wrap, then knit off all 3 bot­tom loops. Fas­ten off.

Now we have two squares joined togeth­er! Next time we’ll join a square to the row below. Here’s a first look at how we’ll do that.

In the mean­while, join as many square as you’d like for the first row, by plac­ing the loops from the pre­vi­ous square on the loom (i.e. if I were to join a third square to the first row, I’d place loops from the yel­low square on the loom). Then come back and join us for the sec­ond row!

Hap­py knit­ting! :D Feel free to leave a com­ment if you have any questions!

Posts in this series:

How to make the first square

How to join the sub­se­quent squares in the first row

How to join the first square in every row

How to join all the oth­er squares

How to make striped squares

I’ve been look­ing for a good yarn scrap project because I love the patch­work look and my yarn col­lec­tion is grow­ing at an uncon­trol­lable rate.

I came across a mitered square baby jack­et one day so I fol­lowed the link to the free pat­tern, but it involves sewing all the squares togeth­er… doable maybe for a baby jack­et but I was­n’t into sewing hun­dreds of squares togeth­er to make up a blan­ket. So I tried look­ing for visu­al tuto­ri­als for a join-as-you-go ver­sion but did­n’t come across any. After mak­ing the Ten-Stitch Blan­ket I was pret­ty sure it’s pos­si­ble to join as you go, so I tin­kered around a bit and fig­ured out a system!

Inter­est­ed in knit­ting along? :D I fig­ure if we start now, and knit one or two squares a day, we’ll have a blan­ket by Christ­mas to give away as gift! (or keep for your­self!) You can also use the idea of tem­per­a­ture blan­ket, mood blan­ket, or sky blan­ket. They’re real­ly great ideas to be mind­ful of our sur­round­ings or our feel­ings so we don’t take them for grant­ed or be unaware of how things affect us. 

Each square does­n’t take very long to make, only 23 stitch­es at its widest part, and it keeps decreas­ing as you go so it feels like it’s knit­ting up even faster. There WILL be a mil­lion ends to weave in, but I weave them in as I com­plete each square so I don’t leave them all till the end.

So! In this post we’ll show you the mate­ri­als I used, and how I made the first square. In the next few posts I will share:

How to make the first square

How to join the sub­se­quent squares in the first row

How to join the first square in every row

How to join all the oth­er squares

How to make stripes!

First, we need:

24-peg loom (I got mine from this kit, it’s the small­est in the kit)

Loom pick

Bulky weight yarn or two strands of worsted held together

Stitch mark­er

Tea! (option­al but high­ly recommended)

(For the demon­stra­tion I’m going to make a hand tow­el with some worsted weight cot­ton, and for clar­i­ty pur­pose, I’m just going to use a sin­gle strand. But for the blan­ket, if you’re using worsted weight, it’s best to use 2 strands held togeth­er for the gauge of this loom.)

Before knit­ting we need to mark the mid­dle stitch. Count­ing from the first peg, which is the first peg to the right of the side knob, put the stitch mark­er on the 12th peg on the loom, like so…

Then we’re ready to cast on!

Cast on row: Make a slip knot with the yarn, adjust it to the first peg. E wrap (wrap the work­ing yarn around the peg from right to left) the first peg and knit off. Cast on the next 22 pegs by e‑wrapping each peg twice and knit the bot­tom loop over the top loop. Beware not to cast on too tightly.

Row 1: Purl (here’s a video of purl­ing) to the marked peg, e‑wrap knit the marked peg, purl to end. (Note in the pic­ture that the last peg of the loom is emp­ty — we only use 23 pegs of the loom.) Beware not to make the stitch­es too tight.

Row 2: Move the loop on the peg to the left of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the marked peg onto the marked peg. Now the marked peg has 3 loops on it. 

(Always move the loop on the left first, then the one on the right, so it looks consistent.)

Move the loop on the peg to the left of the now emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg. Keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the right until you reach the begin­ning of the row.

E‑wrap and knit off each peg until you reach the marked peg. E‑wrap the marked peg, knit off all three bot­tom loops on the peg (I pre­fer knit­ting them off one at a time, it’s easier).

You will now have an emp­ty peg to the right of the marked peg. Move the loop on the peg to the right of the emp­ty peg onto the emp­ty peg, e‑wrap the peg and knit off. Then keep mov­ing each loop to the emp­ty peg to the left and e‑wrap and knit off until you reach the end of row. I find it eas­i­er to do this with the loom sit­ting flat on a surface.

And that’s it! Just repeat rows 1 and 2 until you have 3 pegs left with loops on them. (mov­ing the stitch­es is kind of tedious, appar­ent­ly there are looms with mov­ing inserts to help with this…? But I don’t have one of those looms, so this is why we only make one or two squares a day! It’s not so bad.)

Purl the last 3 loops, then move the loops to the left and right of the marked peg to the marked peg. E‑wrap and knit off the bot­tom 3 loops. Take the last loop off the peg, cut yarn, and tie off by bring­ing the yarn tail around the loop to the front, then through the loop from back to front, as pictured.

And here we have our first square! Now by always e‑wrap knit­ting the marked/middle peg, you’ll get a raised line of knit stitch­es or braid run­ning diag­o­nal­ly through the square. For my blan­ket I just purl all the pegs on the purl rows, because I can’t trust my atten­tion to always knit that one stitch on purl row and not make mis­takes. But it’s up to you!

Here’s a sneak peek of how we will join the next square, so you can see the fin­ished square. (and see? I already make a mis­take by purl­ing the marked stitch on a purl row!)

Hap­py knit­ting! I’ll be back in a few days with the next episode of join-as-you-go mitered square blan­ket! :D

Posts in this series:

How to make the first square

How to join the sub­se­quent squares in the first row

How to join the first square in every row

How to join all the oth­er squares

How to make striped squares

I had a vision of this cowl when I saw the yarn, which was Loops & Threads Barcelona in Arc­tic, and I bought it because it was on mas­sive sale. It is a very fluffy yarn and with the colours it reminds me of clouds. I want­ed to cre­ate a sub­tle cable tex­ture where the cables may not be super notice­able at first glance, and the cross­ing of the stitch­es are a bit hid­den, like clouds, which are eas­i­ly tak­en for grant­ed unless we take time to stop and notice their forms and shapes, and twists and turns.

I was hap­py with the way it came out so I thought I’d share what I did. The fab­ric is dou­bled so it’s extra warm and squishy. It would work nice­ly with any bulky yarn with long colour tran­si­tions of grey and white. (or oth­er colours you like!)

It is a loom knit­ting pat­tern, and if you’re new to it now wor­ries! I include links to video tuto­ri­als for dif­fer­ent tech­niques. Loom knit­ting itself is quite easy, so a begin­ner would be able to fol­low this pattern.

Mate­r­i­al:

Half a skein of Loops & Threads Barcelona — about 150 yards.

41 peg Knit Quick round loom and loom knit­ting hook

4 mm cro­chet hook (for weav­ing in ends)

Pat­tern:

Mark the pegs with elas­tic bands or stitch mark­ers. Mark the first two pegs, *skip two pegs, mark the next two*, repeat from * to * around until there are 3 pegs left.

E‑wrap cast on all the pegs around the loom.

E‑wrap every round until piece is 2″ in length.

Cable round: *Take off and hold the loops from the first two marked pegs. Place the loop from first peg on the sec­ond peg, then place the loop from the sec­ond peg on the first peg, then e‑wrap the two stitch­es* (cable stitch com­plete). E‑wrap the next two stitch­es as usu­al. Repeat from * to * over the next two stitch­es on marked pegs to work cable stitch. Con­tin­ue around work­ing cable stitch over the stitch­es on marked pegs, and work­ing reg­u­lar e‑wraps over unmarked pegs. (Here’s a video for the cable stitch, except that in the video u‑wraps and purl stitch­es are used, where­as in this pat­tern only e‑wraps are used)

E‑wrap 3 rounds.

Repeat the last 4 rounds until piece is 16″ in length.

E‑wrap until the piece is 18″ in length, don’t fas­ten off.

Seam­ing:

Place the cast on loops back on the pegs, care­ful in match­ing the loops to the pegs (i.e. the first loop of the round in the first peg, sec­ond loop on the sec­ond peg, and so on). Bind off loose­ly, treat­ing the bot­tom two loops as one. Fas­ten off and weave in ends.

Move the seam towards the mid­dle of the cowl, and enjoy the fluffiness!

Hap­py week­end, friends! :D

Start the new year right! Use up those scrap yarn to make room for new ones! :D

And get some knit­ting looms! So you can make this hap­py scrap­py loom-knit­ting sweater! :D

*Dis­claimer: I have not received com­pen­sa­tions for any knit­ting loom man­u­fac­tur­ers* (but maybe I should…)

I just… love the sim­plic­i­ty, the rus­tic fish­er­man look, the dou­ble thick, super warm fabric.

So! If you have a knit­ting loom, or if you’d like to get one and try your hands on loom knit­ting, here’s how this raglan sweater was made. 

(Haven’t tried loom knit­ting much but want to tack­le a sweater project? No fear! I’ll have video tuto­ri­als through­out to show you dif­fer­ent stitch­es. I did start with mak­ing hats and head­bands first but the sweater real­ly isn’t much harder.)

I used:

A 41-peg round loom (the largest in the set). I got mine in a set by Loops & Threads at Michaels (for medi­um to bulky yarn). It was about $20 and I had a 55% off coupon so it end­ed up being quite affordable.

Worsted weight yarn. I knit­ted with 2 strands of yarn held togeth­er through­out. I had a large ball of over 1000 yards of for­est green (I can’t remem­ber what brand and lost the label) that I used through­out, then just added dif­fer­ent colours of scrap yarn as I went. 

6 mm cro­chet hook for cast­ing on. Small­er hook for weav­ing in ends.

Yarn nee­dle (that came with the loom set).

Siz­ing:

The size I made was 33″ around. I would have liked it larg­er. Giv­en that I’m on the small scale of humans, I’m going to write the pat­tern for 37″ so it might work for more peo­ple. 37″ is the largest size the loom can make, for this pat­tern. Below are the approx­i­mate mea­sure­ments, with 2 stitch­es = 1″ and 3 rows = 1″. The actu­al mea­sure­ments for your sweater may vary depend­ing on the kind of yarn you use.

Pat­tern:

Notes: 

Knit with 2 strands of yarn held togeth­er through­out. I used one colour con­sis­tent­ly and just added dif­fer­ent colours of scrap yarn. To change colour, I sim­ply cut the work­ing yarn and tie on a dif­fer­ent colour. Very high-tech ;)

The pat­tern con­sists of 4 pieces: front, back, 2 sleeves. They’re sewn togeth­er in the 4 diag­o­nal seams from under arm to col­lar, then sleeves are sewn togeth­er under the arm, and the sides are sewn together. 

Wher­ev­er “knit” or “k” is indi­cat­ed in the pat­tern, it means the e‑wrap stitch.

Front/Back (make 2):

Cast on all the pegs around the loom using this chain cast on method with a cro­chet hook, but don’t join in the round. I tend to cast on quite tight­ly so that the edges are as neat as pos­si­ble (41 sts.)

Work k1 p1 rib for 6 rows. (video tuto­r­i­al for k1 p1 rib here)

Con­tin­ue knit­ting using the e‑wrap stitch (e‑wrap video here) until piece reach 13″. 

Now we begin decreas­ing towards the col­lar (yoke).

Yoke row 1: In the next row, decrease 1 by mov­ing the loop on the last peg to the one next to it, e‑wrap and knit off the 2 bot­tom loops on peg. Con­tin­ue knit­ting until 2 stitch­es remain. Move the loop on the last peg to the sec­ond last peg, e‑wrap and knit off the 2 bot­tom loops on peg. Decrease done! Sim­ple, right? (Here’s a decrease video to sum­ma­rize the action)

Yoke rows 2–3: Knit 2 rows even.

Repeat yoke rows 1–3 eight more times, then work yoke row 1 (decrease row) once more. 28 rows in yoke alto­geth­er, 21 stitch­es remain.

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows. 

Bind off (bind off video here).

Sleeves (make 2):

Chain cast on (same as front/back) 19 sts. 

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows.

Sleeve row 1–7: Knit 7 rows even.

Sleeve row 8 (increase): knit 2, make 1 (m1), knit until 2 stitch­es remain, m1, knit 2. (make 1 video here — the per­son in the video uses a dif­fer­ent knit stitch method but you can con­tin­ue using the e‑wrap for this)

Repeat sleeve rows 1–8 sev­en more times — 64 rows alto­geth­er, increased to 35 sts.

Now we decrease for shoul­der.

Shoul­der row 1: knit 1 row even.

Shoul­der row 2: decrease 1, knit till 2 stitch­es remain, decrease (see yoke row 1 above).

Repeat shoul­der rows 1–2 thir­teen more times, 28 rows alto­geth­er in shoul­der, 7 stitch­es remain.

Work k1 p1 rib for 5 rows. Bind off.

Assem­bly:

With wrong side fac­ing, and using one strand of yarn only (to reduce bulk), sew raglan seams togeth­er con­nect­ing sleeve pieces to front and back pieces. Sew sleeve togeth­er under the arm and con­tin­ue sewing togeth­er the sides. Repeat with oth­er sleeve/side.

Voilà!

And! I got this incred­i­ble t‑rex wood­en sculp­ture from a dear friend :D Isn’t it the most awe­some thing?

If you do give it a try do drop me a line! Cheers to a fan­tas­tic roar­ing year! 

It’s my lat­est craze! I can’t seem to get back to the nee­dles at the moment… I’m sure I will, but right now I’m just look­ing for all kinds of things to loom knit. I saw some real­ly cute cro­cheted and knit­ted tea cozies in the shape of plum pud­ding late­ly, and I thought I could prob­a­bly loom knit one! So here it is :D

I’ve actu­al­ly nev­er had plum pud­ding, but always thought it’s the cutest-look­ing Christ­mas-relat­ed thing! The light­ing in my apart­ment is quite poor espe­cial­ly in the evening, but here’s a bet­ter look at the tea cozy.

I thought I’d share what I did here, in case you’re a loom knit­ter and want to give it a try, or if you also want to try your hands on loom knit­ting (it’s so much fun!), and for myself to remem­ber when I need to make one or a few more next year :D 

I used this 31-peg loom, it came in a set of 4 by Loops and Threads at Michaels. I bought it because it’s afford­able, espe­cial­ly with the week­ly Michaels coupon, for my first try with loom knit­ting. I’m not sure why this par­tic­u­lar loom has an odd num­ber of pegs, because I thought all round looms have even num­ber of pegs… but it worked anyway.

I used:

Worsted weight yarn in brown and white, with 2 strands held togeth­er throughout

A bit of worsted weight yarn in green and red

3.5 mm cro­chet hook

Yarn nee­dle

How to:

To begin, cast on using chain cast on (I learned using this video) with brown.

Then, using e‑wraps (here’s a tuto­r­i­al), work 8 rows around. The tea cozy uses e‑wraps throughout.

We now sep­a­rate front and back pieces.

Front:

Work 16 stitch­es back and forth (to cre­ate a flat pan­el) for 7 rows (video on how to make a flat pan­el here).

Then, incor­po­rate white using this chart.

Start with the bot­tom row. Work two stitch­es of brown. Make a slip knot with white and put on next peg, and work this stitch. When wrap­ping the next peg with white, make sure that the brown work­ing yarn is lay­ing on top of the white work­ing yarn, thus car­ry­ing the brown yarn along. Con­tin­ue fol­low­ing the chart, car­ry­ing the brown when wrap­ping with the white, and vice versa.

After fin­ish­ing the chart, work 10 rows back and forth in white. (My teapot is a bit on the tall side stand­ing at 6.5″ includ­ing lid, so if your teapot is small­er, you can prob­a­bly omit a few rows.) Cut yarn.

Back:

Attach brown to the first unworked peg at row 8. Wrap and knit the remain­ing 15 unworked stitch­es for 7 rows. 

Fol­low the chart for the next 3 rows. If you have the same loom as me you would need to omit either the far left or far right col­umn of the chart.

Work 10 rows in white (or the same num­ber of rows on the oth­er side). 

Work 5 rows in the round. Tie and secure the yarn tail when you get to the peg where the yarn was cut at the end of the front piece.

Leav­ing a long tail, cut yarn. Thread yarn tail in nee­dle, weave nee­dle through each stitch while tak­ing the stitch off the peg, gath­er and cinch the stitch­es togeth­er, turn piece inside out, weave the nee­dle through the gath­ered stitch­es a few more times and tie off. Weave in all the ends. Turn piece right side out. 

Here’s close up of the com­plet­ed icing chart…

Hol­ly:

Leaves (make 3): Leav­ing a long tail for sewing, ch 10, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, through back loop only, *sc in next ch, dc in next ch, ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, dc in next ch, sc in next ch, dc in next ch, ch 2, sl st in 2nd ch from hook, dc in next ch, sc in next ch*, sl st in next ch. Now work­ing on the oth­er side of the foun­da­tion chain, repeat from * to *, sl st in last ch, fas­ten off, weave in this end.

Berries (make 3): Leav­ing a long tail for sewing, 6 sc in mag­ic ring, don’t join in the round, 1 sc in each sc for 2 rounds (or just work 12 sc’s), fas­ten off. Stuff tail end into berry. Thread begin­ning tail in nee­dle, pull on tail to ensure mag­ic ring is closed as tight­ly as pos­si­ble, pass nee­dle through the mag­ic ring and the berry and pre­pare to sew on the pudding.

Assem­bly:

Sew leaves and berries onto the top of the plum pud­ding with the yarn tails, like so…

Put teapot in cozy, and we’re done! Pret­ty quick and easy. Makes a great gift for tea lovers :)

Have a cozy, hap­py week­end, everyone!