I’ve very happy to announce the winner of our blog tour contest.  Congratulations to Angela for winning a copy of The Complements Collection from my last blog post!  Bijou Basin Ranch will be sending an e-version of the booklet over to you.

With a lot of my patterns I suggest very specific techniques to use.  Of course these are only suggestions as every knitter has their own favorite way of knitting :)

Tied with this though I try to add as much details on techniques as possible to patterns.  Due to space constraints however these are text only descriptions which really aren’t always enough.  Knitting is very visual and I think that the easiest way of learning a new technique (well for me anyway!) is to see someone else do it.  Because of this I’m attempting to put a few short little video tutorials together on my site for techniques that I use frequently in my patterns.  That way if you’re working through a pattern and would like to ‘see’ something worked as well as just read the works you can just pop over to my tutorial section.

Its obviously going to take me a little while to get all of these tutorials up there, but new for today we have Japanese Short Rows and the Long Tail Cast On.  I use a variation of the long tail cast on that I originally learned in a Debbie Bliss book that she described as a ‘Thumb Cast On’.  I think this method of working the cast on is a really easy one for knitters that hold their yarn in their right hand.  I find it fast and easy to control.