Patty Lyons - Patty Lyons Knitting Bag of Tricks: Over 70 sanity saving hacks for better knitting

To David, who makes all things possible.

What youre holding in your hands is not a learn-how-to-knit book. You wont find instructions for basic skills, like casting on or making increases, presented in an orderly sequence to take you from novice to master. In this book, Im assuming that youve already figured out the basic skills youll need to knit something. (And just in case you need a refresher, Ive included a how-to section for some of the more advanced techniques in the back.)

Instead of a how book, Ive written a why book. Its not a why do we knit book, but a why do we knit the way we do book. Once we understand the WHY we can figure the HOW to do it better!

For over a decade, Ive been traveling around the country teaching knitting tricks and preaching the gospel of focusing on the why not the how. Over the years, knitters have frequently asked me to put all the tricks in one book. (Ill try, but most likely by the time this goes to press, more tricks will have been discovered.)

I suggest that you read the book in order the first time through, from start to finish. Certain ideas build one upon the other and this will allow you to get the most from each trick. After that, I hope youll keep it in your knitting bag and grab it anytime you want a quick refresher. Or you can flip through it in a spare moment, turning to the sections that appeal to you. How ever you use the book, I hope that it helps you knit better.

I am a self-taught knitter. Allow me to elaborate: I am a self-taught knitter who has done everything wrong and lived to tell the tale. When I first sat down to write this introduction, I realized it sounded a bit like I was introducing myself at a 12-step meeting. Hello, my name is Patty, I am a self-taught knitter. But I think theres value in revealing how I got here and how this book came to be.

When I started knitting, I didnt always know the right way to do something. Sometimes I couldnt find an answer, so I made up a way. Often, when I later learned the right way, I discovered I liked my way better. And sometimes I realized that other knitters arrived at the same solutions, working it out on their needles. For me, knitting presents countless opportunities to do things better (or easier!), and so for nearly as long as I've been knitting, I've been unventing tricks.

UNventions

An UN vention, a word coined by Elizabeth Zimmermann, is something that you discover on your own while knitting. This book contains some of my favorite tricks as well as many of my own unventions, meaning nobody taught them to me and I didnt read about them in a book. I figured them out on my own needles. I dont feel comfortable saying I invented them since there are millions of knitters all over the world also figuring things out on their own needles. Invariably, different knitters in different places and times unvent similar solutions to tricky knitting problems. And one knitter's unvention will sometimes be built on a previous discovery. That's my favorite thing about knitting: it's a living, ever-evolving craft.

Some of the the tricks will make the end product look better, but many of them just make something easier to do. In other words, I genuinely believe that laziness is the true mother of invention.

Under no circumstance do I believe the tricks in this book are the only way to do things, or even the best way (if there is such a thing). They are just my way. My hope, gentle readers, is that in addition to having one or two Ah-ha moments, you will find your own ways to do things better by asking why not. In that respect, this is not just a knitting why book, but rather a knitting why-not book.

Right now, you may be wondering how I went from self-taught knitter to knitting teacher. Simply put, I did it by screwing up everything I possibly could; being alone without any other knitters to help me (there werent knitting blogs and YouTube tutorials back then); and having to figure out solutions all by myself. Through that journey I discovered three fundamental truths that forever changed the way I knit:

Every mistake in knitting is an advanced knitting technique you didnt mean to use at that particular time.

There is a conspiracy of silence among knitters.

Its not you, its them its the stitches fault.

FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH #1:

Every mistake in knitting is an advanced knitting technique you didnt mean to use at that particular time.

When I was a new knitter, I used to think I made way too many mistakes. Now I understand that all those mistakes I made were just me being VERY advanced. Trying to knit rib and I forgot to move my yarn into position before inserting my needle, and I made accidental yarn overs look at me knitting lace! Those times I changed directions in the middle of the row who knew I could short row? I wasnt missing the stitch and accidentally working into the row below I was doing brioche.

The chances are that youre doing this, too. Slow down. Before you rip out your mistakes, really look at them. Figure out why you did what you did. Consider if your way is better or if it can be used somewhere else in your knitting. Learn from your mistakes. You might find your mistakes lead you to a better way to build a mouse trap.

FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH #2 :

There is a conspiracy of silence among knitters.

One of the hardest things for me when I first started knitting was getting used to the conspiracy of silence that I encountered. Knitters pretend certain things in knitting just work or that they are easy to do, when sometimes NEITHER is true. One day you believe that everyone but you can close that last short row in the round without that little gap, or bind off without that weird loop at the end, or knit a tiny swatch with a garter border and have it predict your gauge without making you want to stab needles in your project like it was a voodoo doll. They all just pretend that everythings fine, nothing to see here, shows over, keep moving. When the truth is

FUNDAMENTAL TRUT H #3:

Its not you its them.

Thats right. Ninety-nine percent of the time its not your fault; its the stitches fault. Often, theres something about the stitchs anatomy that causes the problem, but no one has ever explained that to you (see conspiracy of silence, above). The pattern tells you to bind off loosely. The pattern doesnt tell you why thats harder than it sounds, or why youre being set up to fail. Instead, you try to bind off loosely, cant do it, then blame yourself for not being a good-enough knitter. Thats where this book comes in. Here we will break knitting techniques down and bust some myths, always exploring not only the why of knitting, but also the why not.