How To

HOW TO BEGIN
1. First choose the photo, picture or painting that you want to knit, and enlarge it if needed.

2. Choose the yarn and needles. Get crazy with variety of yarns, and don’t worry about it.

When choosing the needle size I recommend using the size suggested on the yarn’s wrapper. If you have a variety of different yarns, and some for example call for needles #10 and some for needles #8, choose the smaller size (unless the majority of your yarn is thicker). This way the knitting will be tight enough to hide the yarn carried in the back.
3.  You will need to knit a sample piece to find out your ratio. Ratio means how wide verses how long your knit stitch is. If you do not take this into account your knitted picture will be distorted and chubby. In some pictures, like landscapes, the distortion is not crucial, but if you are working on a portrait, it matters. Ratio is similar to gauge, but simpler.
To find out your ratio knit a sample piece of 14 sts (with the yarn and needles you are going to use), and knit a square, or at least 16 rows. Take the piece off the needle and measure 10 rows. Let’s say it is 2″. Now  measure how many stitches are in 2″. If for example you have 8 stitches in 2″, then your ratio is 0.8 . It means that 8 sts and 10 rows will create a square.
Here you have 2 options:
* You can copy your design to regular square graph paper, and add an extra  row in your knitting, every 4 rows in the chart. That will add up to 8 sts and 10 rows. Make the extra row look like something between the row under it and and the row above it.
* Or you can copy your design to a distorted graph paper that has 8 squares and 10 rows per inch.
4. Copy your enlarged picture to the graph paper you picked, either by hand or with the copy machine, and this will be your chart. Coloring the chart before starting will make the knitting much easier later.

5.  I find it convenience to take a tray and put everything on it :

Yarn & Needles
Scissors,
Pencil (to mark the lines as I knit them so I do not loose my place),
Ruler (to help me follow the line I’m on),
Crochet hook for weaving in the yarn’s tails and
The chart (graph) itself.

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