Knitting Tips and Tricks from Lily Chin

---

Lily Chin is amazing. Whether it’s reinventing cable charts or being the fastest crocheter on the planet, she’s a force to be reckoned with in the world of yarn.

She’s a master knitter who’s been a professional designer since 1981, and shares some of her favorite knitting tips and tricks with you in her online workshop, The Knitter’s Toolbox. You’ve also got the chance to learn live with Lily online in mid-July 2022 with her Interweave @ Home Knitting Tricks, Tips, and Hints workshop.

We’re giving you a preview of a couple of Lily’s best tips here, to get you ready to learn more!

Just a Few of Lily’s Wonderful Knitting Tips:

I can’t see my stitches.

If you’re knitting with a mohair, bouclé, or a novelty yarn, hold your knitting up to a lampshade to see the stitches better for getting your gauge. This trick also works great to find a dropped stitch!

Do I have enough yarn?

When knitting in stockinette stitch, if you have 3X the length of your row, plus 10%, you have enough yarn to do one more row.

This is not what I expected!

Do unto the swatch as you will do unto the project and you will have no surprises. That is, launder your swatch as you’re going to launder your finished piece and you’ll see what will happen to the fabric.

I wish I would have done this with a sweater I recently finished. The yarn ball band said that said the yarn was machine washable with cold water and dryable on low heat. I followed those directions and my sweater came out of the wash totally pilled. After two goings-over with the sweater comb to remove the pills, it looks years old. Sad for me! All that time and energy knitting went to waste. I’ll wear the sweater, but only in the house.

My bind-off is too tight!

To avoid a too-tight bind-off, use a crochet hook instead of your right needle, and follow these steps:

• Step 1. Place the hood in the first stitch as if to knit, yarn over the hook, and draw the yarn through the stitch. Remove the stitch from the left needle to the hook, just as if you were knitting.
• Step 2. Follow the directions in step 1 to “knit” another stitch. You now have two stitches on the crochet hook. Use the hook to draw the left stitch through the right stitch, as if you were making a crochet chain. You now have one stitch left on the crochet hook and one stitch bound off.
• Repeat step 2 until all stitches are bound off. This method makes a looser bind off because it doesn’t involve the traditional passing the right stitch over the left stitch, which tightens up the left stitch because it tugs on the yarn as it’s pulled over the right stitch.

Related: Still More Tools for Your Knitting Toolbox

---

Pretty great tips, right? Don’t miss the chance to learn from Lily at her Interweave @ Home workshop!

Cheers,
Kathleen Cubley

---

Originally published 2/20/2013. Updated 6/28/2022.

---

Learn from Lily, Anytime