I’ve loved flip books ever since grade school when I used to draw stick figure animations in the margins of my text books. Lately I’ve seen a lot of different ways to make them yourself, or have them made for you from your videos or illustrations. They’re definitely a fun little thing to have around, an interesting novelty, but I have to admit my practical side has resisted them, because really, what purpose do they serve?

The answer is simple: tutorials! These knitting flip books, called Flip Knit, by Annie Modesitt are the perfect practical application of the flip book. Each book shows two different knitting techniques. Flip the book from the front for the first one, and turn it over to flip from the back for the second. Here’s a video of one in action. This is such a great idea, I wonder what other craft techniques could be taught with a flip book?

via The Independent Stitch.

Cheers!
Donna

How to Make a Felted Camera Case.

Last Christmas, I created two camera cases, through trial and error, for myself and mother. I had some lovely malabrigo yarn that I had dyed with kool-aid, but only one skein.We knitters are always running a battle with using up our stash or that single skein we bought on a whim.

Take a look at this tutorial and try it out yourself if you are into self-design.It isn’t a true tutorial as you don’t have a full pattern, but it gives you an idea of how to start as well as tips and tricks of felting.One thing I learned was that the felting shrinks the piece more height-wise than widthwise.

Also, felting is good material for cases and cozies since it provides a thicker surface for the thing it is protecting. I didn’t want pens and sharp keys to poke into my camera while it was jiggling around in my purse, and felted yarn provided the stability that loose knits and purls couldn’t.

Also, when you line the case, always stick your needle in halfway through the felted fabric and then come back out to catch the lining. Don’t let your thread show out through the front of the knit surface!

Thank you for all your comments on my post last week asking for good website’s, books etc to start me up on my knitting adventure. This weekend I have been to the local library to find some books since my computer had crashed at home and I was keen to get going. It seems that with winter coming on our side of the world everybody is getting back to knitting so the shelves were quite empty but I found “Debbie Bliss - How to Knit”

and “Melanie Falick - Kids Knitting, projects for kids of all ages”

The books were o.k. but not very inspiring to start learning. So when I came back to work on Monday I decided to take my 4mm knitting needles and cheap acrylic yarn and went to the Knitting Help website. I browsed through some off the files and see here the result:

YAY I CAN KNIT!! Only one sort of stitch so far but I am off!

Since we are going towards winter in this part of the world I have set myself a new goal; learning how to knit. My question to you, dear reader, since I don’t have my mum living around the corner, which book, tutorial, website can you recommend?

Please leave a comment so I can have a look and also please tell me why this is the best way, I mean did you learn it this way or maybe you have even written this tutorial yourself? I can do a little crocheting so hopefully the step from 1 to 2 needles is not too much to juggle.

Here are some links to amazingly inspiring knitting blogs and most of them have some great free patterns too!

Brooklyntweed

So much yarn, so little time!

Two Left Needles

Grumperina goes to local yarn shops and Home Depot