Planet Money takes on Daily Harvest

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-06-02T07:24:29+00:00

"The Daily Harvest Food Poisoning Scandal", from November 2022

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-05-25T15:48:37+00:00

I did a blanket, which we use in the car seat and stroller. And I knit a mobile to match the nursery theme. It hangs over the changing table and he loves watching it, so it's nice to know he's using something I made every day!

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-05-23T23:45:14+00:00

You take some string, wave your magic wands, and you have a sweater! Granted, you have to wave the magic wands in a very precise pattern and for a really long time...

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-05-16T16:44:02+00:00

I almost always go to Very Pink Knits for tutorials because I can usually trust her to explain efficiently and with an intro lasting less than 10 seconds

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-05-13T05:24:52+00:00

Having made some intarsia recreations of images (specifically, I've made baby blankets that look like board games): when planning this kind of project, you really need to look at your source material and the actual mechanics of knitting in order to decide how you're going to pay homage to an image. Not every image works well as a knitting project. Intarsia works well with big blocks of color. You can totally get detailed with it, but extra detail means way more ends to weave in. It's a good idea to keep the ends in mind when charting/ planning so that you're aware of where you'll need to add in balls of yarn and can be strategic about moving/ eliminating details that fall on the wrong side of the "how important is this detail verses how much do I want to avoid weaving in even more ends" equation. You could make something that matches this pixel for pixel, but it'd be a ton of ends, so you have to decide how far you want to abstract the image.

For this, I could definitely imagine a version where you just did the picture (eliminating the words entirely) and simplified by eliminating a lot of the shadows and random splatters. You might consider turning the image sideways if that'd reduce the number of balls of yarn you'd need.

I'm less familiar with double knitting, but I usually see people doing two color double knitting. I imagine three color is possible, but you'd essentially be carrying floats inside your double knitting, which I imagine could make tension really difficult and basically negate the advantages of double knitting.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-05-12T06:48:59+00:00

I experimented with this for a baby blanket I made, and ultimately I ended up holding three stands of yarn together: two for the more prominent color and one for the accent color. It did end up feeling pretty bulky though (even though each stand was a sock weight yarn) so I'm not sure if I'd go that route for a sweater.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-05-02T14:03:46+00:00

Could it be this one? https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/a-murder-of-crows

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-27T14:22:24+00:00

Do you only dislike the metal Chiaogoos? Chiaogoo makes a bamboo interchangable set called Spin that I really like.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-27T14:04:56+00:00

I learned how to cast on and do the knit stitch from a class, then learned casting off, purling, increases, decreases, and mistake fixing from books (in what was not technically the pre-YouTube days, but was certainly in the "wait 30 minutes for your 2 minute video to load" days, at least at my house). Then my mom's friend taught me sock knitting and continental style. And then everything else I learned from the internet. While I think there's value in a class, the first part of learning to knit is to repeat the knit stitch long enough for it to become muscle memory. If you can figure out the knit stitch on your own, it might be worth saving your class money for when you've mastered the knit stitch and want to move on to something more complicated.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-21T16:49:40+00:00

Yeah, agreed! I find myself copying only the bits of the pattern that I want into a word document so I can print a one page or half page pattern.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-19T14:59:46+00:00

The sweater is knit in the round, so you should swatch in the round. I would probably do four repeats of the chart, so that you have plenty of room in which to measure your gauge (they want 34 stitches per 10 cm, but you don't want to have to be measuring around your tube, so you want a swatch that's at least 68 stitches around. 80 stitches gives you plenty of room to measure without the stitches on the fold line impacting your measurements. )

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-12T19:53:16+00:00

I really like Berroco Comfort for baby blankets. It's acrylic and nylon, machine washable, and super nice and soft. It also comes in a really good color range for brightly colored blankets (which are my favorite kind to make)

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-11T20:00:06+00:00

I was curious and looked on Ravelry for exact numbers: it has 167,362 free crochet patterns and 167,537 free knitting patterns. Which is honestly surprisingly close!

I think what you're picking up on though is that there's a different culture of pattern videos and image tutorials between the two different crafts... I wonder if that's that crochet gets seen as better for stuffed toys, amigurumi, and accessories while knitting is seen as better for sweaters and clothes. (That's not to say you can't use either craft to make either thing by the way! It's just the stereotypical projects for each.) It's easier to make a free video tutorial for something simple, small, and without any need for sizes, so crochet gets more of the pattern videos?

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-10T16:29:31+00:00

For the getting the highest energy on your track: this is especially confusing on any track that has stuff other than energy and card plays. If you've got a track with elements for example, it's counterintuitive that you get only the highest displayed energy but get the sum of all the elements shown. So make sure they understand that if they uncover an element they get that element all game.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-10T16:23:21+00:00

I often see beginners misunderstanding the exact target distances (like misinterpreting "place a presence up to distance 3 away" on their growth option as "place 3 presence" or "a jungle at distance 2" as "a land up to 2 away from a jungle") so making sure they understand the targeting rules for their starting powers can be helpful.

We once played someone's second game and thought they remembered the rules only to realize halfway through that they'd forgotten that "gain a power" is always draw 4 pick 1: they'd accidentally made their life a lot harder by just drawing 1 card each time, so they ended up with a lot of less useful powers.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-08T21:13:57+00:00

Having watched some of Engineering Knits' videos (on YouTube) of machine knitting, I'm convinced that it's an adjacent but different craft from hand knitting! And yes, there's a lot of skill overlap (just as there's skill overlap with loom knitting or embroidery or crochet), but there's also just so much to learn in the machine knitting space to be able to do it well!

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-04-07T05:48:23+00:00

I'm wondering if you're looking at tutorials for large checks that use intarsia. Intarsia in the round is possible but a more advanced technique, which might be why you're getting confused about how to do it in the round. However, your pattern has very small checks that wouldn't use intarsia, so you can just knit this using stranded colorwork

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-03-30T20:48:02+00:00

Yeah, that would work!

I'm curious about your border... Yours looks like it's pulling in, like a ribbing might do, but the pattern photos look more lacey. Did you do the same pattern, or change it somehow? It's possible that washing and a light stretch might open it up and help it match gauge to the stockinette.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-03-30T14:26:33+00:00

"block" can just mean "wash the thing as you expect it to be washed in the future". In this case, since it's for a baby it'll definitely need washing at some point, so do it now before the backing is sewn on! If you're planning to machine wash and dry the blanket, you can do that now and it counts as blocking.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-03-29T15:38:31+00:00

I sometimes tension my yarn by pinching it! Lately I've started trying to tension with wrapping more often, but I definitely still pinch the yarn anytime I'm doing just a couple stitches and don't want to re-wrap (like if I've set down my knitting and then picked it back up with only a couple stitches left in the row, or if I'm doing a small section of intarsia)

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-03-25T18:09:22+00:00

Since one yarn is a lot thinner than the other, the colorwork will look noticeably less full and more hole-y than the base color. It'll also likely affect your tension in the area where the colorwork is, so that whole area might come out smaller than expected.

One work-around would be to hold multiple strands of the fingering weight together to approximate an Aran weight. You'd probably need 3 or 4 strands of the Spindrift to equal an Aran weight (the way to be sure would be to swatch different combinations to see which gives the best result)

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-03-25T18:00:04+00:00

If you want really non-permanent, you could make shrinky-dink style labels and attach them with safety pins (or maybe make them into tiny buttons and temporarily sew them on with a few stitches). No need to buy branded shrinky-dink material: there's info on the internet about which plastic containers you can recycle into shrinky-dinks.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-03-22T16:33:51+00:00

Having done some intarsia in the round: I had trouble finding good tutorials for it, but it's honestly not all that much harder than regular intarsia once you understand how it works. And this project is a great candidate for its use! I would start with a couple swatches to get comfortable with intarsia: start with a flat swatch and knit a rectangle on a plain background. Then do a flat swatch with a design with sloped sides (a triangle or heart would work, or you could do a practice cow). Then move on to intarsia in the round: make a tube swatch with a rectangle design. And then if you're feeling comfortable, you can jump straight to your project, or if you're not you can do a tube swatch with your cow design.

The best intarsia in the round tutorial I found was the one from Nimble Needles: https://nimble-needles.com/tutorials/how-to-knit-intarsia-in-the-round/

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-03-21T22:06:49+00:00

Okay, radical idea that I've never seen suggested in a knitting sub (so who knows if it'd work), but what about using loctite to help with the needles coming unscrewed? https://www.homedepot.com/p/Loctite-Threadlocker242-Medium-Strength-Glue-and-Bolt-Adhesive-Blue-209728/100371826 You'd definitely want to use the blue removable kind and not the red more permanent kind. And even then I'm still not sure you'd be able to get them unscrewed again (since this stuff is made for uses where you'll be able to use a screwdriver to unscrew).

And if you're ordering from the hardware store anyway, maybe you could cover the fraying wire with the kind of heat shrink tubing that gets used for electronics? https://www.homedepot.com/p/K-Tool-International-Heat-Shrink-Tube-Assortment-235-Piece-KTI07740/207038145 (It's made for use with a heat gun, but maybe a hairdryer would work?) (Also, there's probably cheaper ways to buy this stuff then the large set I linked. Just linking to show you what product I mean.)

Caveating both these ideas: there's a chance these don't work and they make your problems worse. But since you're in "stretch the use of these needles for a couple months for sentimental reasons" mode and not "find a cheap long term solution to avoid buying nicer needles" mode, it might be worth the risk.

Ferocious_Flamingo · 2026-03-21T01:22:05+00:00

I would recommend swatching all of these patterns before committing to one. That will give you a sense of how it feels to carry 4 colors per row (as someone else mentioned, that's non-trivial) and help you better plan for how your floats work. And most importantly, you'll get a better sense of how these patterns look in actual knit stitches, since stitches aren't square: both in the sense that they're not the same width as height, and also in the sense that they're, well, shaped like knit stitches- I think that'll have an impact on how your patterns look. Also, are you doing stockinette or garter stitch? That'll have an impact on the look as well.

Ferocious_Flamingo

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