So you've made the leap. You've bought the yarn, watched our videos and now you are sitting on the floor of your living room surrounded by balls of our Merino wool, waiting to start.
If you are nervous, it's completely normal! So were we when we knitted our very first blanket. But very soon you will make something beautiful out of the balls of wool around you and you won't believe how fast and easy it all was.
Without further ado, here are our best tips to keep the process as frustration-free as possible.
1. Take Your Time
Everyone always tell us to take our time when learning something new and most of us get impatient and ignore the advice anyway.
With hand knitting it's even more important to take it slow.
Count your stitches, count them one more time and make sure you don't miss any.
If you do - you will have to unravel the whole blanket and start again!
No one wants to do the work twice, so make sure to measure carefully and take a breath before rushing off into knitting too fast.
2. Measure That Stitch
The size of your stitch ideally needs to be between 3.5 to 4 inches tall, meaning from its top to its bottom.
Why? This will ensure that your blanket ends up in the size you want it to and that you don't use too much yarn knitting.
3. Be Consistent
When knitting, one of the most important things to keep in mind is being consistent. When you make one stitch a certain size make sure that the second and third stitch match it.
If your stitches are uneven, so will be your blanket. Redo the stitch if you need to, or practice a couple of times to get the hang of stitch size before you fully dive into making your blanket.
Remember: the tighter you knit, the more yarn you will use. Don't find yourself out of yarn for your queen size blanket just because you knitted too tightly. Loosen up your stitches to achieve that effortless look.
That being said, start with a project that is more simple to get the idea of the process down. Make a small lap throw in a braid pattern before you decide to create a king blanket for your master bedroom.
4. Prevent Pilling & Shedding
The nature of Merino wool is that it is soft roving, meaning it is prone to shedding and pilling with heavy use.
You can easily prevent your wool from doing this by pre-felting it before you start knitting.
What is pre-felting? It simply means applying heat to strengthen the fibers of the wool to make them more durable and taut.
Watch this handy video we made to learn all about it.
5. Finish the Ends
Once your gorgeous blanket is complete and you are beaming with joy at your even stitches and a pattern that makes your heart sing, it is time to finish it.
You will have two loose ends in your blanket - one at the beginning and one at the end.
While you can simply tuck them into your knitting, we highly recommend using our felting needle to parse the fibers apart and connect them together.
You can get our felting needle here.
This way your loose thread will be seamlessly joined with another thread in your knitting with no threat of unraveling later.
Merino wool as well as felted Merino is on a short time sale now, so if you are thinking about making a Merino throw for a gift this Christmas - use this chance to get it cheaper.
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