Hi!

Welcome to In the Loop Knits, a blog where I’d like to share projects new and old, progress and thoughts about knitting and perhaps more.

I’m Alix, a mother of an 18 month old girl, graphic designer, gardener and self-taught knitter. I have a lot to learn but over the last 10 years I have really enjoyed challenging myself with new projects that sometimes scare me and more often than not being totally impressed that I did the hard thing and it turned out pretty darn good. That has to be one of my favourite parts about knitting. Challenging myself with something that sometimes feels impossible. I’m not like that in other areas of my life!

This blog is a space for me to share the things I find that have helped me with my current projects that might be helpful to others, but to also help push me even further to being a better knitter and actually tracking the things I create. As we go I will share past projects but be warned. I have no idea what yarn I used for half of them, what sized needles I decided to go with, and more than likely didn’t bother to swatch. I’m trying to change this about myself! No more lazy knitter.

The first step to this new more organized knitting version of myself was to design a knitting project journal template that I am able to print out and include in my knitting binder along with my completed project. It has prompts for the project name, type, designer, date started and completed, all the yarn and needle details and any notes I may have along the way. If you’d like to try out my template you can find it here. There’s one for crochet too, if that’s your thing.

Knitting came into my life at a time where I needed change, a way to shift my focus and challenge myself in a creative way. I’ve always been a creative person which ultimately is why I became a graphic designer. Knitting is different though. It absolutely amazes me that someone is able to design and create something so intricate with a single long piece of yarn. I wanted to learn to do that and be good at it. I decided to buy a pair of cheap straight needles, some yarn (knowing nothing about gauges) and watched a YouTube video to give it a go. Like most first projects I knit a scarf. It was absolutely terrible but I tried again, and again. Thankfully my Godmother is a very good knitter and was able to give me some tips which helped my confidence.

After a bunch of absolutely horrendous scarves I was brave enough to try a simple pair of socks. I say this to anyone who is interested in knitting, socks are perfect for learning because they have the most basic stitches but stitches that are used for harder projects too. So once you practice those and get a good feel for actually reading a more complicated pattern you will be able to try something more challenging next. I’ll try to dig up the sock pattern and share that in a later post.

That’s all for now. I intend to post regularly and will share more about my knitting journey with past projects, current projects and ones I can’t wait to dive into in the near future.

I’m excited to keep you In the Loop.