Britt's Knits:
It rhymes; it must be cool.

I am a beginning knitter. I don't know how long it will be until I'm considered accomplished, but I keep plugging away. My guage has improved quite a bit, and I've certainly bought enough needles to impress the casual observer. I'm told that socks are the end-all be-all in certain knitting circles, and I think I'm getting the hang of them.
     I've picked up crocheting, too. On the whole, I don't find it as pleasing as knitting, but it's a little more flexible, it seems, and I really enjoy thread crochet.

My free patterns

Designed by me, and everything.

• A Row Counter--not really a pattern so much as an accessory, but hey, the directions are free..
• A two-foot long stocking cap and instructions for the English cast-on -- impossible to make too tight!
• Baby sack: the ultimate easy-on-mom baby garment(no pantslegs, no snaps, no buttons) made easy-to-knit in bulky baby yarn.

Projects from Cyberspace.

I've done a few projects from free patterns on the web. They're in reverse chronological order, with easy stuff at the end and the difficulty level rising as my skills improved. If you have questions about any of these, send me some email! I hope to provide some pictures, too, so you don't have to knit sight unseen.

Baby Corn Bunting

I knitted this for my friend Leslie's baby, and you can see Andy modeling it if you scroll down a ways to the Halloween pictures.

Easy Mittens

This is a great pattern for using up scraps in a constructive manner. To check your gauge, cast on 36 sts and knit in the round, for a few inches, and slip this over your hand. Increase or decrease needle size to get a comfortable fit. I made a beautiful pair using two strands of Reynold's Lite-Lopi. On #6 needles, my gauge was 4 sts = 1 in, resulting in a wonderfully dense, thick, mitten 10 1/2 inches around, a roomy fit on my hands (which are about 8 inches around). I used 2 skeins (50 g each) plus scraps, but I barely had enough! Play around with colors and pattern stiches on this one--it's a perfect canvas for experimentation.

Crochet CD coaster

My Inner Environmentalist is enraged every time I have to throw out one of those stupid "100 Free Hours" disks from some moronic national internet access provider. At least the floppies you could reformat and reuse. But those CDs! All that unrecyclable plastic and metal going straight to the landfill just breaks my heart. Finally, someone has found a semi-practical use for them! The nerd factor on this project is high, but yet the filigree has great anachronistic appeal.

A crochet toilet paper cosy from this bath set.

The scalloped trim is pretty neat, I think. And some people are mightily offended by naked spare rolls of toilet paper, so the TP cosy is always a welcome gift.

Some wash cloths.

For the Open Star washcloth, one should cast some multiple of three stitches, and work:
Row 1: K2, *yo, K3, pass the first of these sts over the other two* repeat to last st, K1.
Rows 2 and 4: Purl
Row 3: K1, *K3, pass the first of these 3 sts over the other two, yo*, to last 2 sts, K2
The YO's make a pattern of open spaces like this:

o o o o o o o o
 o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o
 o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o
 o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o
 o o o o o o o o
o o o o o o o o

o o o o o o o o
 o X X X X o o o
o X X o o X o o
 o X X X X o o o
o X X o o X o o
 o X o o o X o o
o X X o o X X o
 o X X X X X o o
o o o o o o o o

A knit tea cosy (The previous link is to a copy of the original page at the Interet Archive Wayback Machine.)

A knitted pea cap in two versions: seamed and in the round.

These two versions seem identical except that one is worked with two needles and the other is worked in the round, so after doing the first one according to the pattern, I did the second one for Jason with a few modifications. Since no gauge was given, I just cast on 116 stitches to make it a little roomier, and worked for 8 inches instead of 10 so it wouldn't be so tall. I also did a few extra decrease rounds at the top, so the hole wouldn't be so big.

Row Counter

This is my own design. T'ain't pretty, but it works.

Materials: 22 pony beads, about 8 inches of Rexlace (you know, that boondoggle-lanyard stuff!), a piece of cardboard about 2x2 inches square, and a medium-sized binder clip.
Equipment: Scissors

1. Cut (or rather, bore) two holes in the cardboard, each just large enough to permit a pony bead to slide through.
2. Cut two pieces of Rexlace, each about 4 inches long. It's easier to work with it if you trim the ends so they're pointed.
3. Tie an end-bead onto each piece by threading the Rexlace through the "top" of the bead, taking end of the Rexlace around the bead and threading it in through the "top" of the bead again, and tying a knot in the Rexlace at the "bottom" of the bead. (If you've done this right and the hole in your cardboard is not too big, you will not be able to pull the end-bead through the hole in the cardboard because the loop of Rexlace around the outside will make it too big.)
4. Thread 9 more beads onto each piece of Rexlace.
5. Thread the free end of one piece of the Rexlace through one of the holes in the cardboard. Tie another end-bead onto it, as in step 3. Trim the Rexlace. Repeat with the other string of beads.

To count rows: Begin with all the beads (except the right-hand end bead and the left hand end bead) on the back side of the cardboard. The count is zero-zero. Push a bead on the right-hand string through the hole to the front. The count is zero-one, or one row. (The end-beads don't count!) Do it again -- for a count of zero-two, or two rows. Repeat until you get to zero-nine. To count ten rows, push all the beads on the right-hand string through the hole to the back, and on the left-hand string push one bead through to the front. The count is one one-zero, or ten.
     A cool thing about this counter (if I do say so myself) is that you can use it for things other than counting from 1 to 99. For example, if your pattern says "Repeat rows 1-6 seven times" then you can use one string of beads to keep track of which row you're on, and the other to count which repeat you're on.
     While you're not knitting, clip the binder clip over the holes so the beads can't slide through.
     You can see that you could choose different materials. Whatever you have laying around the house would be fine. I have delusions about some day replacing the cardboard and binder clip with a clever construction of wood and rubber bands, and using leather thongs and nice wooden beads, but I don't think I'm quite craftsy enough to pull it off.

Links

A great page of links by Carlin
Yarn classification by Ester Bozak
My search engine page can be used to find patterns on the web. Just try searching for "knit cable sweater pattern" or whatever.

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