Knit Luck - Knitting Your Way to A Better Life

Wednesday, 17 April 2013 09:13

It's Yarn Along again. Time to see what knitters are knitting and reading all around the interwebs. It's a great way to find new knitting blogs and get people to find yours too!! Click here to read all of our old yarn along posts. We've been doing this a while and you can see our progress on our knitting for almost the past year!

As mentioned earlier in the week I haven't done of knitting lately. There's too much spring cleaning to do. I did however sneak in some reknitting of the Shakespeare Cardigan sleeve. A row counter definitely helps. I don't know why I ever try to knit without one. Part of the problem is that I have to hide the row counter from my kids. They think it's a toy so then the row count is never correct. I'm getting better at writing these things down somewhere.

Plus the weather is nice again and I don't have so many excuses to stay inside to knit. I end up going to the park a lot more and having to watch the kids it's hard to get any knitting done. Soon the youngest will be big enough to play all over the park and I won't have to worry about him falling down or falling off the play structures. Probably by mid summer I might be able to do some sock knitting at the park.

As for reading a couple of months ago I scoured my local antiques shop for old books and came across this little catalog of craftsman house plans. I live in a town full of craftsman houses and it's interesting to be able to point to one and say "oh wow that's pattern #44!". It satisfies the part of me that longs to own a house. As much as I like that era of houses I don't like how dark those houses are. I prefer large windows full of light. Still, you can't argue with the cuteness of a bungalow.

What are you knitting and reading?

Tags:

Please leave a message after the beep

How to Start a Knitting Blog

Tuesday, 16 April 2013 00:00

While knitting is a solitary endeavor, you don't have to knit alone and you don't even have to join a knitting circle to be a social knitter. These days you can find many knitters online sharing their projects on ravelry and on their own personal blogs. Having a knitting blog is a great way to track your progress over the years and to show your friends what you've been up to. But where to begin? How do you start a knitting blog?

While it may seen that blogging could be quite complicated, but really you don't need to know any code to get started. Follow these simple steps and you'll be well on your way to your first knitting blog.

The Five Quick and Easy Steps to Starting Your Knitting Blog:

1) Choose a blogging platform

Blogger is cheap, customizeable and relatively easy to use. You can have a blog started in an hour. Use that. A lot of people use more complicated software that you can get if you buy your own domain name and purchase web hosting, but it's not crucial. Get used to blogging the cheap and easy way and come back here to learn how to create a custom knitting blog (coming soon) for yourself when you're ready.

2) Choose a name for your blog.

Do yourself a favor and don't use a pun. It's been done a million times before. Choose a name that reflects the goal of your blog and your own interests. Read more about Great Knitting Blog Names (coming soon)

3) Write your first post.

Do a little introduction and mention what you hope to achieve on your blog. Visit here to learn more about what makes a great knitting blog post (coming soon).

See how you like it. Did you like that? Did anybody comment? No? Not yet, don't worry they will.

4) Read other knitting blogs -and comment.

It's no fun talking to yourself. The easiest way to get new readers is to read other peoples blogs and to comment on them. Be sure to return the favor whenever somebody comments on your blog.

5) Keep writing

The best knitting blogs are updated regularly. If you're crazy you can update them every day, but 3 times a week is very effective at generating a regular audience.

This is just the beginning of our guides for beginning knit bloggers. Stay tuned for more of our posts coming soon. Be sure to like our Facebook page, follow us on twitter, and pinterest and get alerted to our newest posts.

Tags:

Comments (6)

Year of Projects Week 7

Monday, 15 April 2013 07:11

It's been a slow knitting week. Most of my projects are in a transitional phase where I have to cast something on and sometimes it takes me a while to wrap my head around embarking on the next part of a project.

The back panel of the Dahlia Cardigan is done. I have to crochet cast-on for the lower back and I'm not ready yet. I'll give it a go... sometime.

I had to rip out all of my work done on the sleeve because my increase to row ratio was not adding up. This is typically what happens when I refuse to use a row counter. Then trying to keep track of my knitting and my row counter with toddlers is a major joke. I haven't had much quiet time to attck my knitting. Hopefully we can remedy that soon.

Here are my projects for the year:

Christmas Socks #1 (60% done)
Christmas Socks #2
Christmas Socks #3
Christmas Socks #4
Multnomah Shawl (5% done)
Older Boy Cardigan
Younger Boy Cardigan
That Knitted Cuff Thing
Pepperberry Knits Hat
Mitered Block Blanket (90% done)
Shakespeare Cardigan (55% done)
Dahlia Cardigan (8% done)

At home I'm getting ready for Eskimimi's Knit and Crochet Blog Week. I want to get my posts written ahead of time so that I can post both my regular posts and my blog week posts. It's a lot of writing so I don't know how much knitting I'm going to fit into my schedule. Fortunately I'm scheduled to spend some time with Renny of Confessions of a Yarn Addict fame. Hopefully we can inspire some serious knitting between the two of us and hopefully the boys can entertain each other while they're at it. :)

How's your knitting going? Let me know in the comments.

Tags:

Comments (7)

Knit Luck Links April 11 2013

Thursday, 11 April 2013 09:10

Every now and then I find a collection of great knitting links all at once so I share them as part of Knit Luck links.

I'm sure you've heard the news that the Fox Corporation is doing a bang up job pissing off knitters this week by forcing them to stop producing anything related to the Jayne Hat. I agree with What the Craft that this is a copyright issue and that we all get pissy when other people take our copyright so we have to suck it up when the shoe's on the other foot. I'm just worried about when the BBC is coming to take all the Dr. Who stuff off Ravelry...

Thanks to Knitty I found out that Kaffe Fasset is having a giant retrospective in London. If you're not able to make the hop over the pond, check out Dreaming in Color, which is your Kaffe Fasset retrospective in book form. Here's to hoping that it will make an appearance in North America

Gifts for Knitting is gearing up for Mother's Day with some great gift recommendations for Mother's Day. It's my favorite way of telling my husband what I want to my birthday/Christmas/Mother's Day/special treat.

Learn more about the term Yardage Chicken from Sezza Knits, a game I seem to be playing a lot lately with both the Shakespeare Cardigan and the Dahlia Cardigan.

I am giving thanks to Project Stash for sharing the Merging Ripple Shawl. That's some badass Knitting if I've ever seen any thought I am so tempted to call it the Merging Nipple Shawl...

Tags:

Comments (1)

Blogging for Knitters! Joining Blog and Crochet Week!

Thursday, 11 April 2013 08:20

One of my frustrations as a knit blogger is the lack of authority or content offering advice and ideas for knit bloggers. That's why I've created Blogging For Knitters, a catagory here at Knit Luck to inspire knit bloggers to take the blogs to the next level. This summer I'm going to have a series of posts helping new knitting bloggers pick a domain name, buy a domain name, find a host, choose an independent blogging software solution, get your blog customized, optimize for google and install analytics. How do I know all this stuff? I worked for three years as a small web agency project manager. I have been building my own web sites since 2009 and blogging since 2004.

One of the reasons I'm announcing this is to help with a little accountability. I've been wanting to write this content for a long time because I know it will help people. There are so many great knit bloggers out there who are writing amazing posts who are not getting an audience. I want to show knit bloggers how to expand their reach and even earn money from blogging. However, I'm also writing content for my other websites and blogs and raising babies so it's hard to prioritize things. But now, announcing this intent to you now I am making a commitment to bring Blogging for Knitters to fruition.

So we're starting today, announcing our participation in Eskimimi's Knit and Crochet Blog Week at the end of April. We did this last year and had amazing fun. It certainly improved my blogging skills. If you're looking to reach more people with your blog, if you're looking to stretch your blogging muscles you must join Eskimimi's Knit and Crochet Blog Week.

If you do one thing this year to improve your blog, joining Eskimimi's Knit and Crochet Week will make you a more confident knit blogger, will connect you with other knit bloggers and will inspire better content from you. It starts April 22, go check it out!

Keep checking back in the coming weeks for Blogging for Knitters posts or join our Facebook Page and sign up for our newsletter (on the right sidebar) to get the news sent to you!

How long have you been knit blogging? What would make you a better knit blogger? Let me know in the comments!

Tags:

Comments (1)

More Articles...