Harrisville Designs

Learning how to decrease stitches in your knitting is an invaluable tool to add to your arsenal—once you master the basic decrease stitches, your knitting can move beyond basic rectangles. Single knitting decreases will reduce your total stitches by one each time they are worked. We will learn how to do four different decreases in this tutorial: SSK (slip, slip, knit), a left-leaning knit decrease, k2tog (knit two together), a right-leaning knit decrease, SSP (slip, slip, purl) a left-leaning purl decrease, and p2tog (purl two together). We recommend practicing this technique on a stockinette swatch to get the feel for how each type of decrease is worked.

Knit stitches are “live,” which run the risk of unravelling if they aren’t secured. This is why we need a bind-off. There are numerous ways to bind...

The crochet seam is one of the easiest seaming methods to learn, if you’ve never joined two flat pieces of fabric together. The join created by a crochet seam is stable and less flexible than other methods, such as the mattress stitch, which makes it great for any project that requires structure, such as blankets or slippers. We recommend skipping this method if you are looking to seam a garment.  

Garter stitch and stockinette are the foundational building blocks of almost all stitch patterns in knitting. Everything you can learn about knitting will build on these skills—once you have these stitches down pat in your muscle memory, the world of knitting becomes so much more accessible, and fun.

There are likely innumerable ways to make a pom pom for crafting, or to top a knit hat. In this tutorial, we’ll show how to use our Harrisville Des...

The whip stitch is a useful seam to know. Although it does not create as strong of a seam as the mattress stitch, the whip stitch is an excellent ...

Seaming pieces of knitting using the mattress stitch is an incredibly useful technique. Seams add stability and structure to knit garments, prevent...

The cable cast-on is an incredibly useful technique, which allows knitters to cast-on more stitches in the middle of their knitting, or at the begi...

One of the most common cast-on methods is surely the long-tail cast-on. The edge is stable, without being terribly stretchy, making it perfect for ...

Welcome to Week 4 of the Elara Makealong! If you missed the previous week's tutorials, see the Casting on, and working in the round tutorial, as this week's tutorials build on the stitches learned in that post.

Welcome to Week 3 of the Elara Makealong! If you missed the previous week's tutorials, see the How to Swatch for the Elara Pullover tutorial, as this week's tutorials build on the stitches learned in that post.

Welcome back to the second week of our Elara Makealong! If this is the first post you've seen, and you're new to crochet, we recommend reading the How to Chain Stitch, Single + Double Crochet, and Treble Crochet and Beyond, as these skills are needed in this tutorial.