I’m changing course away from sizing adjustments, to talking about specific techniques. Before I get started on that though, I want to introduce you to my techniques database.
Knitter, please meet the Jill Wolcott Knits® Techniques Library.
I’m in the process of putting together a web page to make accessing this really easy, but it is a process, so it isn’t completely ready today as I’d planned. But go here to get some insight into how to use the Jill Wolcott Knits® Techniques Library.
Why I’m Changing Course Toward Techniques
When my website was first being built, it was the intention of the builders and Jill Wolcott Knits (me) to have an awesome database that would be a go-to-place for knitters. I am likely to blame that that didn’t come to fruition exactly as planned, but now we’ve made some tweaks, and I’ve been working on making it more efficient, so it seems like the perfect time, as these updates have become available, to be changing course here on the blog toward techniques. l will be choosing types of techniques to talk about, and pointing to them in the Jill Wolcott Knits® Techniques Library every Tuesday through the remainder of 2016. I will have merely scratched the surface!
Originally these techniques were written to support knitters using my patterns. Over the years, I have seen people use my website as a resource, so I decided to make it easier for them to find things. Just as it doesn’t necessarily occur to me to call something a pullover, or a cardigan, I haven’t always been consistent in how I’ve entered things into the database. The work that went on over the past several months to clean this up should take care of that. Now, if you search a technique by name you will find it, but you can also find it by searching by category: knitting stitches together, increases, decreases, bind offs, etc. It is likely we missed some logical connections, so look for refinements as I go through the database looking for things to introduce you to. As I discuss techniques, I’ll link the database and the blog post so they become a super resource.
Why Changing Course Makes Sense
I love techniques and am always looking for the best possible way to do things in any given knitting situation. Although my background is in garment construction, I really would rather knit than sew my knitting together, so I’m always looking to do things “on the needles” and I think this has made me come up with better ways to do many techniques. I often say that I will spend hours figuring out a way to do something better. I cannot bear that something be done because that’s how it’s always been done. If there is a better way then that is how I want to do it. My shortcuts are not necessarily simpler.
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