Are you a fan of hand knitted sweaters? If yes, then you must try to learn the art of knitting sweaters and other woolen garments yourself. While the job is not easy, you’ll have a good time when trying to make a sweater or cardigan for your loved one. If you want to achieve something close to perfection when knitting sweaters, you must develop certain skills.
The section below will inform you about those skills and provide you with tips that will allow you to hand knit sweaters that you or someone you care for will be able to wear.
The Skills You’ll Need
Before you start knitting a sweater, you must ensure that you have these fundamental skills:
• Knit & purl
• Bind off
• Decreasing and/or increasing
• Reading patterns
• Seaming and/or knitting on circular needles
Learning the “and/or” skills mentioned above will allow you to choose from a wide variety of patterns. The remaining skills are the basic ones you need for knitting a simple cardigan or sweater.
Some Helpful Tips for You
You might not come up with the finest wool sweaters in Canada in your first attempt, but the tips below will surely make the job a lot simpler for you.
Don’t Use Your Beginner’s Needles for Serious Knitting Jobs: Hand knitting involves the use of a wide variety of needles. As a learner, you will probably get to use the straight, long needles made of plastic or metal. However, while those pieces are good for learning various knitting skills, they will not offer the best results when you are making a sweater that one will be able to wear.
Always Start by Knitting a Tension Square or Gauge Swatch: Before you cast on your knitting project, you must knit a tension square or gauge swatch. This will help you to ensure that the knitted parts of the garment get a perfect size.
You may come across experienced knitters who prefer skipping this step. That’s because this step is extremely time taking. However, if you want your hand knit sweaters to have a professional look, make sure you don’t avoid this step.
Improve Your Tension: Poor tension is the most common reason why a knitting project looks untidy and unprofessional. So, you must ensure that you are neither knitting too loosely nor making things too tight; these are the two causes of poor tension. Here, you must know that good tension is something you can achieve only with practice. Additionally, you can also consider using a ball winder to keep your yarn in place.
Learn How to Fix Mistakes: For making perfect hand knitted sweaters, you must learn to identify your mistakes and fix them. Ignoring mistakes is the last thing you should do if you want the end product to be close to perfect. Some common mistakes beginners tend to commit are:
• Wrongly placed stitches
• Twisted stitches
• Extra stitches
• Excessive tight/loose tension
Following the above tips will require you to invest lots of time and effort. If you are unlikely to get so much time, you should consider buying high-quality hand-knit woolen sweaters in Canada from a well-known store. Searching online might help you to find companies selling genuine handmade sweaters and cardigans.
#handknitsweaters #woolsweatersincanada