My Favorite Knitting Patterns and Yarn: See my favorite projects, patterns, and yarns!

hey what's up guys welcome back to my channel when i started this channel just a few short weeks ago i posted on my instagram and in the caption i asked people to tell me what they might want to hear me talk about in a future video and i got a few questions there and then i posted in my stories recently and asked for more questions so in today's video i'm going to tackle some of the questions that i had and in the process i'm going to show you some sweaters i've knit some of my favorite yarns and a book i love and we're just going to talk about knitting so stick around and we'll get to it [Music] all right before we get to the first question i just want to remind you if you're enjoying this video and you're getting something out of it definitely be sure to hit the like button down below and if you want to see future knitting related videos for me be sure to hit the subscribe button and hit the little bell next to it if you want notifications so i think the best question to start with was how old was i when i started crafting this is sort of a hard one for me to answer i think the age that i became super serious about it was 33 just last year or was really in 2018 whenever i started crocheting and then knitting came along it was an even bigger obsession right away than crocheting that was the first time i really as an adult devoted massive amounts of time to it and a lot of energy into learning and getting better i'm super happy that i did it because i've gotten a lot out of this and i can't wait to just keep growing and learning and getting better next up somebody asked me what my favorite thing that i've ever knit is and what my least favorite thing that i have ever knit and i can tell you the category of least favorite things and that is scarves i don't know why i wear scarves all the time living in chicago but i just don't want to knit them they just seem like they're going to take so long and it's not going to be like impressive whenever i'm done even though i've knit i would say two scarves one's a wrap and i love them and one of them is my most worn item but i just don't ever feel inspired to knit a scarf the way that i get whenever i see a hat pattern i like or a sweater pattern that i like which leads to my favorite types of things to knit i really really really like quick projects and i think when i first started knitting all i wanted to knit was something that was quick and i feel like i probably should keep knitting quick things because i have more yarn than i could ever knit i think i probably will die before i ended all my yarn especially because i'm going to keep acquiring more but um i love to knit larger projects now such as sweaters i love knitting a good sweater and then recently i got kind of burnt out on sweaters and then i switched to socks which for me take a little bit more time as well i was over committing myself on sock projects at one time and now i'm back to sweaters with my cozy classic raglan so i think my least favorite is scarves and my favorite is probably tied between sweaters and socks i have a couple of my favorite sweaters that i knit it'll lead me into my next question i got which is what's your favorite or go-to men's sweater pattern and that's a really hard question for me to answer because i think my favorite pattern is always my most recently completed successful pattern and my least favorite is my most recently completed pattern that has some sort of flaw that i can't get past but i have recently knit two sweaters that i absolutely love one of them was maybe a couple sweaters ago and one was my last order that i finished and if you follow me on instagram at drowning in yarn you will have seen these but i'll show them to you now just in case um and also i'm about to expose myself because i post these things on instagram and they look complete but they're not i leave my ends completely unwoven in until i'm ready to wear it out into the world and i finished both of these when it was getting warmer so i haven't actually worn them out so they're done so the first one is my most recently completed sweater and it is the lila now it is your basic raglan sweater with a lice stitch it is knit bottom up it's my first bottom up sweater and i absolutely did not love that process it scared me i was afraid i wasn't gonna get the length right i was afraid i wasn't gonna get the fit right i always taper my sweaters as i go down the body and i had to increase as i went up so that the bottom was a little bit smaller and it increased as i went along while still maintaining the life stitch and it just i got to the underarms joined the sleeves because i did knit the sleeves first i joined to the sleeves and then i set it aside out of fear because the raglan shaping on this was decreases and i had only ever done increases once i picked it back up and started knitting it i was so mad at myself for being afraid because it was so easy i did have to do a little bit of math because i always have to admit a little bit of extra yolk depth so on this one i went through the pattern figured out exactly how many rows that i had left to knit i figured out what my row gauge was just by measuring that and i calculated exactly how many rows i would need to add before doing the decreases to make sure that my yoke depth came out to my final measurement which tends to be around 11 inches that was i think part of what scared me but then once i just started doing it and realized that that was kind of the process that i needed to go through to make sure that it fit it was easy and i was so mad at myself for not just diving into it because from that point on it was very quick and the sweater fits like a damn dream i love it so i think this is an excellent pattern i was inspired to knit this by laura mcdougall she knit it i don't actually know when but she said it is just her go-to pattern and i saw hers it is so cute and i needed one for myself so i knit this one in brooklyn tweed arbor and the contrast color for the little nice stitch pattern throughout the sweater is prairie spun dk from brown cheap co in the color honeycomb and the brooklyn tweed arbor is in the color spruce which is you will see later in this program so stick around i love this sweater i think the colors were very successful and the fit was very successful so my next favorite is the montrealer sweater which is a hoodie it's from designs by dells i knit this sweater in woolstock worsted it is also a basic raglan shaping started from a provisional cast on um it was super fun to knit it was deceptively simple the the impact of the sweater is high for something that is so simple to knit so that one is one of my favorites but like i said i don't have a go-to pattern i think that it might be this cozy classic raglan in the end but it might be too soon to say that i'm just really enjoying it and i think the pattern is just so well written so the most asked question that i got was what are my favorite yarns or what is my favorite fiber um and this question piggybacks perfectly off of the last question both of those sweaters are knit in two of my favorite yarns i love brooklyn tweed arbor which is what i knit my lila now in this yarn is a dk weight yarn it's so soft it's not scratchy at all the colors are absolutely beautiful and the leela now that i knit was actually a worsted weight pattern i knitted it in this dk and it worked out perfectly these dark greens are some of my favorite i actually have to be kind of careful to not just knit everything in these dark earthy greens because i have a lot of clothes in these colors but i saw this color and i just knew i had to have it and especially in arbor because it holds up really well it doesn't really pill and it makes just a beautiful squishy like luxurious feeling fabric so i like all the other brooklyn tweed yarns as well but arbor's my favorite i love dk weight and then my montrealer was knit and woolstock worsted which is actually i think more of a dk weight but this is a skein of the yarn that i had left over from my sweater i actually bought far too much in these 150 ram skeins which was a steal the wool is so woolly i love like wooly wools but it's not scratchy at all it's very soft with stitches that are really well defined it's a very good deal for the yarn it feels amazing so i love this yarn and i can't wait to work with it in another project i just love to try yarns so even some of my favorite yarns end up showing up in only a few of my projects because i just get so excited to try new yarns which you'll see in a minute because some of my favorite fibers are things that i haven't even knit with but i have a couple more that i love that i had knit with to show you one of my absolute favorite fingering weight yarns is inch by quinceanco finch is just an amazing fingering weight yarn it is very well priced you get a decent amount of yardage it comes in a lot of colors and i just think it's a great yarn that makes a really lovely fabric my favorite thing i've made with it so far is a roku hat which is one of my go-to hat patterns i've knitted four times and i've knit two for gifts thing it up quickly and they're absolutely beautiful let me show you the one that i've made now in two other colors of finch so this is the roku hat that i made in finch it's just your basic ribbed hat and where you get your money's worth out of the pattern is in these decreases the decreases are so cleverly done that they create just the most finished looking top of the hat that i've seen that i've knit anyway it really just looks like it's got that like handmade versus homemade thing going on because of how clean the decreases are it just is such an amazing hat it is written for worsted weight yarn however i have discovered that my favorite way to knit it is by holding two fingering weights together so this one was knit with two strands of finch held together for a moral look you'll see that it is marled with a mustard color and sort of almost a walnut color that comes off a little gray now to do this i just use the smaller needle that was called for in the pattern because you start with the smaller needle and then you go up the needle size for the rest of the hat i just stuck with a smaller one and it created a really dense hat that has not stretched out it still fits my head like the day that i made it and doesn't ride up when i wear it which i found that a lot of the hats i knit have written up some so i just have to keep tugging them down so i just like this one just that little extra because it doesn't do that and it fits so well one more yarn that i really love and i've knit with is the new cotton and wool yarn from brooklyn tweed called dapple it is so soft and it comes in really beautiful kind of like earthier tones and i just love it i knit one of my new favorite hat patterns out of it i absolutely love a scrappy project and this one was just perfect it is the midnight lights hat by tiff nielan as you can see it's got this really gorgeous fade going on the dapple is this brim color the best thing about this hat is it's reversible so if you flip it inside out you have a much more subtle look and you really see this dapple which is so soft and you still get that gorgeous fade kind of going on from the contrast colors it is a twisted rib with slip stitch pattern the whole hat it also has really clean decreases that create that very nice crown and i just highly recommend both the midnight light hat and the dapple yarn so i'm super excited to wear this hat this winter the contrast colors in this by the way are leftover malabrigo socks that are from sock projects one of them was from brian i think this top one and then these are both from some socks that i made so you should buy this pattern and knit this it's amazing so now i'm going to get into two yarns that i'm so excited to knit with but i have not yet used the first one is germantown from kelborne woollens from everything that i've read it's just a really great workhorse wool and you get excellent yardage and the price is right and the colors are really fun so i can't wait to try this i just got these two skeins i figured i would knit maybe a hat or something whenever the feeling strikes me and i'll see how it goes but i can't wait to try them and the other favorite yarn that i have not used yet is actually from an indie dyer called fiber for the people the dyer's name is taylor earl and she has a podcast and some yarn dying tip videos which is how i found her whenever i decided that i was going to take on dying as a new hobby i looked up her videos and she teaches so much it's very obvious that she loves what she does and she wants to share that and i just found that super inspiring and it didn't hurt that she dyes some of the most beautiful yarns i've ever seen and she does amazing things with my color palette that i love in those earthier tones so during a recent shop update i splurged and i got some skeins this one is your standard sock yarn with some nylon in it and i will not lie to y'all i thought i was ordering something else and accidentally clicked the button for this so it was a happy surprise when i got it because i do love a bright sock and i think she did something amazing with this neon green it is so beautiful there's so many colors going on in here i can't wait to see what the socks i knit out of this look like i'm really happy i made that mistake because this is gorgeous these two were super intentional i don't know what i'm gonna do with them but i'm gonna save them for the perfect thing because they're absolutely amazing these are 100 superwash new zealand paul worth which is a new wool to me so i need to look that up they sort of feel to me like blueface luster a little bit they feel amazing and these colors are just gorgeous so i can't wait to see what i'm going to turn these into but i just gotta find the perfect things they're so good and also in the package was a packet of what i can only assume is like her favorite tea but i thought it was just such a nice touch it just it doesn't surprise me because from her instagram presence and her youtube presence i just feel like i would want her to be my best friend immediately and that kind of confirmed it for me so i highly recommend you go check out her yarns they're gorgeous somebody did ask me who inspires me in the knitting world and why i think somebody who inspires me a lot is clara parks she's an author who writes a lot about yarn she has written tons of reviews of yarn she's appeared on tv reviewing yarn and she's written a few books that are sort of memoir-ish i guess about just her yarn travels and people that she's met and i've read them all her most recent book was vanishing fleece that was about a bale of wool that she bought and decided she was going to turn it into yarn just to kind of get to know the process since she is such a yarn person that way she knew you know from sheep to skein what that was like it was really interesting i learned a lot about the american wool industry and i just i think she's super interesting now i have read most of her books either i borrowed one or two from the library and then i owned some in ebook form one of the books that i actually have a physical copy of is the noodles book of yarn she also has a knitter's book of wool that i intend to pick up but i got this for christmas there are a lot of patterns in here there's also a lot of information about different kinds of yarn and what it's best for and different kinds of wool and so i love this it's just kind of a resource but i highly recommend you check out all her books if you're really into wool and really into yarn then you will find them super interesting if you're not really into wool and not really into yarn then what are you doing here just kidding but you should check them out now somebody also asked me do i have a yarn room they said that people love tours of yarn rooms and as you can see i live in a very small place which is changing soon i am moving but i'm not gonna have excess rooms then either so i'll show you where i keep my yarn but there's nothing impressive about it but to do that i'm gonna have to take you on a little tour with me so let me just take you off the tripod and show you where i keep it okay so i pulled a bunch of stuff out to show y'all so this isn't where it usually is but here's my yarn room this bag and it usually goes under my couch i also have i have two under my couch i have a tub in a storage closet in the back but that's most of my yarns that i bought whenever i was doing crochet which was a lot of acrylic yarns that i keep around because i have knit baby sweaters and acrylic and i think it'd be great whenever i decide to knit my dog a sweater also just in case i get the urge to do amigurumi and then i also have another one of these big storage containers under my bed i am almost they're almost full so i'm gonna have to buy some more they're super cheap from amazon and they've been really useful living in kind of a smaller place it's been the best way for me to store my yarn and not feel overwhelmed by it all and it's still really easy to pull out whenever i want to go through so that's my yarn room um it's not that impressive all right thanks for coming along with me for that the next one i have there's a lot of questions in here so i may not get to them all i got asked what are my favorite and least favorite types of projects to knit my knitting hue my most worn items i'm looking at my ipad now because this one's kind of long my most worn items my favorite yarns which i told y'all my favorite indie dyers which i told you all and you'll already know i love my hand-dyed yarns from knit one my local yarn store they're all amazing so i'd add them in there as well my and my favorite knitters i follow on instagram so i'm gonna start with my most worn items um i have told you my favorite and least favorite types of projects to knit i love sweaters and i don't love scarves but since i don't love scarves it may surprise you that one of my most worn items and one of my favorite things i've ever knit is a scarf it's a pearl soho pattern it's just a fisherman's rib scarf super simple to knit and it's knit in their big good wool which is like a steal i went to new york for a wedding and so we popped into pearl soho at the end of last year and they had a sample of this i tried it on and immediately knew i was gonna make it so i bought the yarn and i started as soon as i got home i knit this whole scarf in a week while i watched the marvelous mrs maisel i still have only seen the first season so don't spoil it for me it just goes with anything and it keeps me super super warm so i highly recommend this pattern i have two more projects to show you for my most worn items the second to last are these socks they're just basic ribbed socks from the book custom socks by kate atherley super simple three by one rib and these are knit in malabrigo sock which doesn't have any nylon so i just used it for kind of the main color and then for the contrasting heel toe where i thought i needed maybe a little bit extra strength i used a madeline tosh yarn with some nylon that i got on sale on their website right before they sold to jimmy bean's wool but i thought it worked really well with this fun confetti kind of wool that reminds me of sprinkles and i love sprinkles on my ice cream and cake and stuff so i thought these were perfect for me and i love these socks they're one of my favorite pairs i've ever knit and then the last thing on my most worn list is my night shift from andrea mowry so this shawl i wear it more just kind of as a scarf it goes really nicely in my jacket so kept me warm all winter i knit this out of painted sky for the color shifting yarns there are six colors in here and then for the solid or semi solid in this case i use malabrigo rios the pattern does call for all skeins of spin cycle but i couldn't justify the cost at the time um not knowing even if i was going to wear it because it was kind of hesitant to knit a shell in the first place and i love this thing it just goes really really well under a coat you can imagine you know i just zip the coat up here and then it just keeps me all bundled up and warm and it's beautiful i love this thing and i'm so happy i knit it yeah so those are really my most worn items and some of my favorite patterns i definitely recommend you check them all out so the last two questions in here that i haven't already answered are what's in my knitting queue and that's an extremely hard question to answer if you go on ravelry my knitting queue has a ton of stuff that i probably will never actually get to because i just kind of add things there to remind myself of them i have no idea what's coming next for me i have a few sweater quantities of yarn that i bought since the pandemic started and i need to figure out what to do with them i don't really know so i can't say that they're in my queue per se there's no pattern but those yarns are in my cue to be knit and then my last one is my fave knitters that i follow that's a really hard question because there are so many inspiring people i love all the things that i see from tif neal and hand knits who designed the midnight lights hat i've been super inspired recently by a person on instagram that goes by cold brew knits he is obsessed with the cozy classic raglan and has knit a couple or a few and they are beautiful and inspired me to go ahead and knit the sweater using the mohair which kind of scared me i'm really glad that he made the post that he did that gave me the courage to do that because i i'm so happy with it i mean you've heard me talk about it so much at this point and you're gonna hear me talk about it more because the thing is amazing and i'm really happy with the yarn choices that i made i have him to thank for that so he's one of my favorite instagram knitters right now i also really enjoy following hey brownberry she just seems like a super like inspirational kind of person and she's kind of an all-around maker and she just makes beautiful things and just has this like presence about her instagram that just gives me like happy vibes she also i've seen a couple socks from her that are gorgeous and so i really enjoy her instagram and summerly knits also has like a billion beautiful socks that i love to look at so she'd be one as well and i think that's the last question so thanks for sticking around and hearing me answer these questions and kind of ramble a little bit it's been fun and if you enjoyed this and if you got some value out of this please go ahead and hit the like button down below and hit the subscribe button doing those things really helps me out and if you want to tag me on instagram when you're watching my videos put me in your stories or anything like that i'd love to know and tag me in any projects that you do that are super awesome because i'd love to see them and i think that's all i have so i'll see y'all later

Channel: Drowning in Yarn

Views: 32,121

Keywords: favorite knitting patterns, knitting patterns, favorite Knitting, patterns, knitting podcast, favorite knitting podcast, knit sweater, andrea mowry, favorite knitting projects, knitting projects, handmade sweater, knitted hat, knit hat, favorite knitting pattern hat, favorite knitting pattern sweater, knitting hat pattern, knitting sweater pattern, designs by delz, french press knits, the montrealer, leelanau sweater, male knitter, gay knitter, knitting questions

Id: 55UxVsDdQCw

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020