Alpaca Direct Blog

The Nurmilintu Lace Shawl by Heidi Alander is the perfect one-skein project for beginner lace knitters. In this post, Kelley shares tips for knitting this free pattern and how to add some unique finishing touches.

Joining a new yarn to your project can be a bummer if the join shows in the finished project. There are ways, however to make the join invisible (or nearly so). In her latest episode of Technique Tuesday Kelley demonstrates 4 great methods for joining a new ball of yarn to your project.

When you're knitting a sweater that has shoulder seams, there are several options for joining them at the top. Kelley highlights three techniques: the 3-needle bind-off, the Kitchener Stitch, and the slip-stitch bind-off.

Learn how to cable without a cable needle and 5 more tips for knitting cables successfully. Kelley shares her experience knitting the Jones cardigan from tincanknits.

Do you have high quality patterns and would like a new way to get paid and reach knitters and crocheters?   

Vests are good entry projects into sweater knitting. You use a lot of the same skills for vest knitting as you do in sweater knitting. Kelley knit the Calidez Vest this week, which is a super-quick project.

Learn two techniques for making your sweaters look professional: using backing buttons and adding a phony seam. All sweater knitters should have these skills in their toolbox.

Kelley just finished a pair of Skimmer Socks by Sheila Toy Strombetzg. These are great when you don't want your socks to show very much, because they're almost invisible under your shoes. I especially love this style because I'm a clog wearer, and these come up lower on the top of the foot, so they don't show. Yay!

These and the Turkish Bed Socks are my favorite knit sock patterns to wear with clogs.

Short socks, or footies, as some like to call them, are great for summertime (or anytime, really) knitting. They're a small, super-portable projects, and there are so many designs to choose from.

Kelley is working on the Rose City Rollers pattern by Mara Catherine Bryner. Make them two-at-a-time like Kelley did, and you'll have a pair to wear in now time at all!

Kelley has almost finished her darling version of Susan Hickson's Candy Bear. She featured it on two episodes of Technique Tuesday, and it is the cutest.

This week, Kelley demonstrated picking up stitches to attach the bear's head to her body. She used this method instead of seaming the head to the body.

Kelley's has a new granddaughter, and she's busy knitting her all kinds of little treasures. The latest is the Candy Bear by Susan Hickson. 

As always, Kelley has lots of useful tips and tricks for knitting this project. One of them is particularly great—how to avoid some of the seaming, using Judy's Magic Cast-On to on the feet and ears of her Candy Bear.

There seem to be a million choices for binding off knitting, and I almost always gravitate to the "regular" bind-off, passing one stitch over another. But sometimes you just want something with more pep, and the picot bind-off fits the bill!

This bind-off is pretty and versatile—you can change the look to fit the project and your mood. Kelley's here to teach you how to work two versions of this bind-off.