So, what's a web-savvy person going to do when they wish to learn how to
knit or crochet? Search for instructions on the web, of course! So, my first set of guides are going to
be focused on the result of googling for basic instructional guides on
how to knit and how to crochet.
To start, I googled 'learn to knit', and got the below site as the first result (no wonder, as one of it's URLs is 'learntoknit.com'). Though the site covers both knitting and crocheting, since I started with learning to knit, this review will focus on the knitting guide first.
The Guide
Name: Craft Yarn Council's Learning Center
URL: http://www.craftyarncouncil.com/learn-home.html, though both
www.learntoknit.com and
www.learntocrochet.com resolve to the same page as well.
Contains: Guides on learning how to knit and crochet (along with some generic information about both). For the purposes of this review, we're staying in the Learn section of the site. They have other instructional pages as well.
Summary
If you want to learn to knit well, run far, far away from this site. The Craft Yarn Council's instructions for learning to knit breaks almost every rule for a good guide, including having incorrect information.
Detailed Review
I can't say I've heard of this organization before, but the page you start on makes them seem like a good site to learn from. If you're really curious, you can click on their
About link in the top menu bar and see that they're an organization representing different yarn crafting companies (and the companies are listed). Hm, they sure have the resources to put together a good guide, right?
Which makes me kind of confused as to why their knitting guides aren't good at all, at least content-wise. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Since the first page is just a generic 'welcome to our guide' page, we can go over to the left hand menu list and click 'Getting Started'. Even though that's the second link, I don't care so much about 'Knit vs. Crochet', I want to learn to knit.
Doing that gets you to
this page. It's pretty basic and lacking in much detail, but I guess it's good enough for what it is. It covers the very basics of yarn weight, crochet hooks, and knitting needles...pretty good information to keep in mind, though it would be better if they mentioned how to match the needle size to the yarn weight.
From here, we can either click a link on the new left-hand menu, which lists all the guides for knitting and crochet. I'm not 100% thrilled with the mixing of the two crafts, but it's not horrible navigation. Also, they conveniently give you a link to both the 'Basic Knit Instructions' and 'Basic Crochet Instructions' on the top of this page, for which the first link takes you to the first link on the left hand side.
The title of this page is '
Learn Knit Stitch (Garter Stitch)'. Which would be fine if they meant that they're going to teach the user the knit stitch in order to produce something in garter stitch. But that's not the case. The first sentence on this page states:
"The basic knit instructions below will show you how to cast on and to make a knit stitch, also known as garter stitch."
Um, no. The knit stitch is not 'also known as the garter stitch'. Knitting every row on a flat piece of work produces garter stitch. But so does alternating rows of knitting and purling in the round. It the set of knit and sometimes purl stitches that make garter stitch. Incorrect information on the first instructional page; not a good sign.
They then state that they're going to use an afghan square pattern to teach you how to cast-on and do the knit stitch. First, why is the cast-on instructions on the knit stitch page? It doesn't make navigating for reference easy at all. As for learning in the framework of a project, I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it is nice to try to get something good out of your first efforts. On the other hand, trying to have brand-new knitters make something as the first thing they do is a set up for failure to teach and learn, unless the learner can take from the instructions that maybe the first couple of squares they'll do will be practice, and he/she will know to go on after they get a good square. Also, this doesn't teach towards flexibility in skill. Not the worst set-up, though.
What I really have an issue with here is the instructions for what you need. Do they think they'd get useable squares out of a pattern that tells the learning knitter to get whatever worsted weight yarn they feel like and a pair of US8 needles? This would have been the perfect place to introduce the concept of gauge and different types of fibers. You could even tell the learner not to worry about it until they wanted to make a good square even. But whatever. The learner has the materials, now what?
Let's learn to cast-on! To do so, let's learn a version of the Knitted Cast-On without telling you it's a version of the Knitted Cast-On. It's the only cast-on ever, until you need a different one. Strike two.
Of course, after only teaching the only way to cast on is teaching the only way to do the knit stitch. Just like the instructions (which aren't bad) for the 'cast-on' used English style, they're teaching English style knit stitch (which, again, the instructions themselves aren't bad). Without even stating that it's a style. Why does it seem like all the guides teach English style as 'the' knitting style? I don't get it.
So the learner gets done with their first row of knitting. Yay. Now here comes this lovely gem:
"Now measure your work. It should be about 7" wide. If it is too wide,
start over and cast on fewer stitches; if it is too narrow, start over
and cast on more stitches."
What? No! You NEVER measure a piece of knitting that's that close to the needle unless you're only looking for a rough estimate of width. Your measurement WILL be wrong because having the stitches on the needle spaces them out differently than in the fabric alone. Who's bright idea was it to put this line in here? Also, telling someone who just knit their first row to make sure it's the proper width and rip it out and guess how many more or less stitches to put on to get the right width is really, really bad thing to do. How are they supposed to guess how many more or less stitches to put on? If you were worried about the width, maybe you should have talked about gauge and had the leaner practice on a swatch, huh? That way, they would know how many to cast-on in the first place and they would have some practice with knitting already. But no, they just now have a frustrated leaner constantly ripping out their work because they're too busy guessing things. Hell, you don't ask a experienced knitter to do that if you don't have to.
So anyway, we get past that, knit the square, and get to the binding off instructions (which also aren't knit instructions, but if the cast-on's here, might as well through in the bind-off as well). The instructions are straightforward and detail the most common bind-off. Unlike cast-on's and knit stitches, I don't really expect guides to cover alternate bind-offs, because they're pretty situation specific, and 9 times out of 10 you'll only need the standard bind-off (I don't even know if it has an actual name). Acknowledgement of other bind-offs would be nice, but hey, they couldn't even cover any other standard cast-on so that's to be expected.
It also would be nice if there was a link on the bottom of the page that went to the
purl page, but nope, got to scroll up to the left-hand menu bar to get there.
The funny thing here is that on this page, they acknowledge that garter stitch is the product of knit stitches instead of the knit stitch itself (by comparing purling every row to it, which, of course, is another way to get garter stitch). The actual instructions here are simple and, other than maybe numbering the actual steps, is perfectly good. Other than the fact that, again, they only show English style but call it 'how to purl', but that was to be expected at this point.
The last three pages in this guide cover
increases,
decreases, and the
yarn over. Unlike the rest of this guide, they're actually decent. Both the increase and decrease guide covers two different ways of doing so, and even state that there are many other ways, but here are two of them. The instructions are pretty clear (which is about the only consistently good thing about this guide), and they even mention the idea of the increases/decreases slanting one way or the other. The only issue I see is that on the increase page, the left-hand menu bar disappears, so I have to go back to the last page to get to another page in the guide.
In conclusion, I don't recommend this guide. Despite no issue with the descriptions of the steps themselves, the guide itself, and especially the knit stitch page, is set up to confuse at best, and frustrate at worse. There are factual errors and oversimplifications, and a couple of basic topics are not covered (like gauge and matching needle size to yarn size). It may have some use for a quick 'how do I decrease again' type question, but that kind of information can be found in many places, most likely easier to find than this site.
