The YarnCraft podcast is a half-hour radio show in which my co-host Liz and I share pattern recommendations, crafting ideas, stories, and interviews on all things knitting, crocheting, loom-knitting, crafting and more. Every two weeks, we come to you from the Lion Brand Design Center in New York with a new episode, but you can…

Before working at Lion Brand, I only had limited experiences with handknit items. A friend of mine knit me a beautiful ribbed red scarf when I was in college, (It wasn’t until working at Lion Brand that I realized that the yarn used was Wool-Ease Thick & Quick) and later in college, my girlfriend knit…

With the 4th of July on the horizon, it seems appropriate to talk about America’s favorite pastime (other than knitting and crochet, of course). Combining two great traditions, the National NeedleArts Association’s Stitch N’ Pitch series is all about taking your knitting, crocheting and other needle arts out to baseball games all around the U.S.…

We were recently contacted by a blogger from Spain named Ariel, who authored a post about how to knit (como tejer in Spanish) over 2 years ago. Since he thought our own learn-to-knit instructions were very useful, he linked back to our website as a graphical resource that he found and used for these instructions,…

It turns out that some of the best ways to understand mathematical concepts and to solve mathematical problems is by expressing them with knit and crochet models. Daina Taimina, a math professor at Cornell, was the first to crochet a model of hyperbolic space. Hyperbolic crochet was also used to show the coral reef by…

I love this pattern, and this project reminded me that I had come across a similar flower stitch in a vintage knitting book from the 1930’s years ago and used it as an accent pattern for a baby sweater. It’s a really great stitch that has a thousand uses. The Flower Garden is one of…

If you’re a yarncrafter and you’re on the internet, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of people like to make socks. And if you listen to our YarnCraft podcast, you’ve heard me talk about socks an awful lot! I mostly taught myself to knit while I was in design school. I wanted to take hand-knitting…

This Saturday is World Wide Knit In Public Day 2008. Go ahead and crochet too please. We know the difference but most people don’t. It wasn’t too long ago, in the late nineties, when there was a lot of talk on the internet about people having the unpleasant experience of being ridiculed when they knit…

Swatching is an important part of the design process. Let’s say we decide to design a striped afghan knit with Vanna’s Choice. The variables are infinite! How many of the 49 colors do we want to include? How long should each stripe be? What colors should be placed next to each other? When designing the…

I’m Hilary the V.P. of Sales for Lion Brand. Lately I’ve realized that two of my passions—health and yarn are converging. I’m fortunate in that my passion is my work and my work involves selling a wonderful product that encompasses fashion, color, design, and is affordable and beautiful. I take pleasure in the fact that…