Topic
Next steps once the basic techniques feel comfortable.
A handmade slipper wears out in one place and it is always the same place. Leather, suede, rubber, grip fabric and latex compared on cost and lifespan, then the cutting, the stitching and the ease problem that makes knitted soles pucker.
10 min read Intermediate
A 12 cm Santa needs a 5 cm beard. Scarlet wool that will not creep into the white, curls laid in at the root only, and the least face you can get away with.
9 min read Intermediate
Avocado stones give pink, not green. What separates dyeing from staining is the mordant, and what separates a colour that lasts from one that does not is knowing which plants were never going to hold.
8 min read Intermediate
A slipper for a 25 cm foot leaves the needles 37 cm long. Choosing yarn that will actually felt, swatching for your own shrinkage figure, and judging a free pattern before you cast on.
10 min read Intermediate
Crochet loses 20 to 30% in the wash where knitting loses 30 to 40%. Every measurement, hook size and cycle length on a crochet slipper follows from that one difference.
10 min read Intermediate
Wool takes acid dye because it is protein and cotton is not. The acid, the temperature and the timing all exist to make that bond happen evenly — and to stop the pot felting your fibre while it does.
8 min read Intermediate
Knit an absurdly large wool bowl, shrink it by a third in a hot wash, and dry it over a form. The pattern, the arithmetic, and why the entrance is easier cut than knitted.
7 min read Intermediate
A horse is half body and half leg, and the wire skeleton settles that before any wool goes on. Build the barrel deeper than the legs are long and you have made a pony.
7 min read Intermediate
Foxes are made of triangles — a wedge head, pointed ears, a sharp muzzle — and one enormous tail. Get the wedge right and the rest follows.
4 min read Intermediate
A cow face ends in a broad flat pad, wider than the bridge of the nose above it. Taper the face towards the nose instead and you have made a deer in Holstein markings.
7 min read Intermediate
The highest point of a brown bear is its shoulder, not its head. Build the muscle hump over the shoulder blades, dish the face and pull the snout out long, and it stops being a teddy.
7 min read Intermediate
One armature and one method covers every breed. What actually changes between a dachshund and a labrador, and the four measurements that make a dog recognisable.
5 min read Intermediate
