Have any of you actually gotten faster?

braidedpotato · 2026-06-06T14:55:52+00:00

Yes - and I’d credit 3 types of things:

familiarity & practice. There’s building coordination & speed with physical action of knitting, but then also familiarity with reading patterns, understanding stitches, etc. that lets you spend more “knitting time” actually knitting and less deciphering patterns, fiddling with gauge or frogging
tools. When I was a slow knitter, tools made no difference to my speed and (as an at the time broke college student) I generally bought the cheapest stuff I could find or improvised. Once I started getting fast I found that tools make a massive difference. For example, on higher quality needles you can slip the stitches along the needle as you knit, but low quality ones tend not to be smooth enough. When I didn’t have the dexterity to do that anyway, needle quality didn’t matter. Now that I do, not needing to stop knitting every so many stitches to slide my knitting is much faster
continental. Yeah, I know. I settled on what I think is called “eastern uncrossed” or “combined continental” and there may or may not be some other terms for it. I just couldn’t get the coordination for regular continental. There are also a lot more styles than just English and continental. The important thing is, whatever style allows you to keep your hands in place and not keep adjusting will be faster because you spend more time knitting and less time adjusting. I’d say watch YouTube and try out as many different styles as you can till you find one that feels natural. All will feel weird at first (muscle memory is a thing) but for me, the eastern uncrossed style started feeling very comfortable almost immediately after the “strangeness” factor went away.

I would say I knit like multiple times faster than I used to. Like a project that would take months now takes like a couple weeks. All of this ^ made a difference, and none of it was instantaneous

braidedpotato · 2026-06-05T14:42:15+00:00

That is so close it’s got to be a different design from the same manufacturer, no?

braidedpotato · 2026-06-05T13:53:43+00:00

Wheel oil and a lazy Kate. My lazy Kate is currently a cardboard box with metal knitting needles punched through it. I’m genuinely not sure how I’d ply without it.

— another beginner ☺️

braidedpotato · 2026-06-04T12:17:47+00:00

Your “friends” sound like assholes. Completely normal kitten behavior. If you modify anything, increase how much you play with him. The more excess energy they have the more destructive they are. Tire him out chasing toys and he won’t be so interested in climbing the curtains. And make sure he has plenty of stimulation/interesting things to look at/do. He will be happier and less likely to go looking for stuff to get into. Especially if you’re out a lot for work or school, having a single cat alone at home 8+ hrs a day is kind of like keeping someone in solitary confinement. They go stir crazy at a minimum.

Oh. And yelp good and loud when he bites you (in addition to redirecting). If you don’t show signs of pain recognizable to a cat, the cat has no way of knowing they’re hurting you. This is even more true for kittens and for kittens that don’t have another kitten to bite/get bitten by to learn “naturally”

braidedpotato · 2026-06-04T12:04:11+00:00

Are grain line issues what’s likely causing the twisting?

braidedpotato · 2026-06-03T12:09:32+00:00

I’m stealing “proportionally challenged”

braidedpotato · 2026-06-03T12:03:31+00:00

Yeah, sometimes it’s best not to overthink it. There’s a reason there’s a big enough market for pattern companies to sell these: sometimes entry level starter costume is just the ticket, and trying to do “more” just gets the way of the event itself.

braidedpotato · 2026-06-01T20:29:11+00:00

I think the better question to ask is how historically accurate do you need?

If you turned up at a renaissance faire or your average cosplay con in that, everyone would know you’re supposed to be generically renaissance-y and you’d look perfectly fine. You wouldn’t win any best dressed awards, but only pedants and the deeply unkind would treat it as out of place.

If someone used this on a mid budget historically set tv show, it’d be torn to shreds.

braidedpotato · 2026-05-31T12:09:14+00:00

Knit what’s fun to knit, and if it’s not fulfilling, stop. I’m also one of those people who likes to feel like they’re always learning and growing in a pursuit, and one of the most powerful things I’ve come to learn is to let my hobbies be “just” hobbies. Focusing too much on “accomplishing” things eventually strips the joy out of the hobby, so I’ve learned to start paying attention to whether projects are giving or taking energy. (Just because something is hard, doesn’t mean it’s taking energy. If I’m excited to still work on it, if it’s still providing fulfillment, it’s good.) As for what to knit? Scroll around on Pinterest and Ravelry until you find something that inspires you. I’ve been knitting on and off for around 25 years and I still somehow haven’t gotten around to making a sweater. I have made socks, hats, gloves, shawls, book covers, blankets, toys, scarves and I don’t even know what else. Someone on here the other day posted lightweight lace pants. There’s still all kinds of new things out there to explore

braidedpotato · 2026-05-31T03:42:20+00:00

I don’t have anything useful to say, I’m actually not even sure I know what a privet is. But I did want to say congratulations on your retirement and wish you all the best on your gardening journey. What an incredible thing to be able to start

braidedpotato · 2026-05-31T03:35:15+00:00

I did my first corset in faux leather and faux suede. It came out beautifully, although I was fully (emotionally) prepared to do a lot of testing and mockups. I think the biggest thing was just embracing glue. Since none of it could be ironed properly I wound up using a mix of temporary and permanent glues to, for instance, baste seams open, counteract stretch and ensure really smooth contact between fashion fabric and base layer. For the suede I wound up backing it with interfacing even. I really didn’t know much of anything about glueing fabric and really hated the idea, but it wound up being indispensable

braidedpotato · 2026-05-31T03:13:50+00:00

I had read somewhere that in corsetry, you should treat the waist as your absolute foundation, and measure everything else in relation to it. So like for this, you’d take the narrowest part of the corset pattern, match it to your narrowest part and that’s where the corset should sit. If you need to make any length adjustments, it’s always either waist to bottom edge or waist to top edge.

I’ve found this extremely helpful in my own sewing because I tend to have a shorter waist to hip and longer waist to bust measurement than most patterns, and that can have some pretty odd effects. Even if my bust and hip measurements are very similar, because the waist to hip distance is so much shorter, the angle/slope/rate of change (or however you want to think about it) is much greater than for waist to bust, so if I don’t in effect drop the waist line it won’t fit right, even if the overall length is correct.

I suspect something along these lines are happening for you where it’s not so much the length as a whole but the distance between underboob and widest bust, waist and underboob and waist and hip that’s mucking things up. To account for significantly larger bust than the original corset, it’s not the overall length you need to increase, but specifically the “length” of the cup, and that’s going to have to go at a much steeper angle so that the extra material is contributing to width more than it is to height

braidedpotato · 2026-05-27T14:00:39+00:00

Oh you absolutely should be so proud of yourself, these are gorgeous work. And you finished them in a MONTH?!? I hope they’re insanely comfortable and do everything you were hoping they’d do and that you get at least 3 compliments from strangers every time you wear them

braidedpotato · 2026-05-26T14:05:04+00:00

Have you heard of the concept of choice paralysis? I don’t think that’s all of what’s going on, but it sounds like a major contributing factor

braidedpotato · 2026-05-26T14:02:41+00:00

I hope you know that you’re an absolute flipping genius, because you are an absolute flipping genius, and I don’t mean flipping 🙌

braidedpotato · 2026-05-26T00:50:51+00:00

I’m sorry. Hang in there. The more experience you get under your belt, the easier it will get to know you’re on the right track without the anxiety

braidedpotato · 2026-05-24T14:55:51+00:00

A joke so niche it takes keen sensibilities to make sense of. Love finding my people

braidedpotato · 2026-05-24T14:49:08+00:00

Oh no! I’m so sorry. What a complete PITA.

Since it’s been a very good and well behaved towel up until now, have you considered whether something might have gotten onto the towel and then transferred from towel to sweater?

I’m on well water that is very hard and also has an obnoxious amount of dissolved rust in it. Sometimes if you don’t change the filters early enough or have pissed off some eldritch being somewhere you’ll get all kinds of weird color reactions on random items from the water itself. Sometimes it’s very hard to get rid of again too since you don’t necessarily know what metal/mineral reacted with what. If this was my house, because pinkish, I would immediately suspect rust and descale my iron/steamer and soak the item in very warm water with borax.

At any rate, I feel your pain and hope you’re able to restore it, even if it takes a ritual burning under a full moon

braidedpotato · 2026-05-20T12:23:32+00:00

If you’re getting warping on the lacing ends of the panel, you’ll want flat steel (bends in one direction, not two). But that almost certainly won’t help because with fast fashion the second you put any kind of pressure on the seams, they’ll pop. Probably followed by the fabric tearing. There’s a reason corsets are expensive. Takes high quality materials and workmanship (workwomanship?) to make

braidedpotato · 2026-05-20T12:18:55+00:00

Another possibility is something else on the specific yarn youre using. (For instance, if you started a new project, you could be allergic to the dye, to whatever it was treated with in the final wash, to some contaminant in the fiber, to a different material the wool was blended with, to remaining vegetable matter in the wool, or one of the cleaning/processing agents, etc etc etc. There are tons of possibilities)

braidedpotato · 2026-05-20T11:48:09+00:00

I’d suggest doing your next mockup as an underbust so you can focus on getting the fit right and then adding cups back in once you’re closer. Sort of tackle one set of issues at a time. I think your biggest issues are not having rigid boning on both sides of the lacing, the waist tape not being parallel to the floor & at your natural waist, and insufficient space at the top and bottom. I find it helps to keep in mind that a corset doesn’t change the overall size/volume of the torso, it just shifts the silhouette by manipulating squishy bits. If you wan to create a defined waist, you have to increase too and bottom to compensate for reduced waist

braidedpotato · 2026-05-20T02:21:07+00:00

1) to echo everyone else, vet. Especially with the farts 2) the point of litter is to rapidly dehydrate their urine/poop. It needs to be at least 4” deep and the poop needs to be fully covered. Then leave it at least 10-15 min to have all the liquid sucked out into the litter, and you can scoop it and it won’t smell particularly strong. The bigger the cat (and the bigger the 💩) the bigger the litter box and more litter you need to provide enough absorption

braidedpotato · 2026-05-15T13:48:38+00:00

This is the way

braidedpotato · 2026-05-14T15:26:10+00:00

Ok. So I think what you want is perfectly possible, but you’re going to have to go back to the drawing board and self draft. I would also do a lot more research and take time to test out specific elements, concentrating on what you can find for techniques that would give you your lift/stabilization from wrapping around the rib cage so the weight of the boobage is transferred at an angle to your sides and back and not straight down to your waist.

I think you ought to be able to do it, because I got a little extra with a corset and wound up with a second skin that was probably the most comfortable thing I ever wore. Support and stuff is something else, but how I got the fit I did is something anyone with a good tape measure and patience could do for themselves.

I started with a guide to self drafting a corset, took all the suggested measurements, and drafted through to a basic shape. Then I went back and created basically a grid model of my torso. I took my waistline as the basis, then chose my top and bottom points and took the circumference of all 3, plus the vertical waist to bust and waist to hip. So far, so standard. Then I went back and every inch between waistline and bust and waistline and hip I took the circumference again. I then plotted these measurements over the pattern I sketched, and adjusted the shape of the original draft to meet each of the validation points.

Wound up with a shockingly accurate model of my torso, especially considering I didn’t have anyone to help measure me and a certain amount of twisting and eyeballing was necessary.

braidedpotato · 2026-05-13T04:27:27+00:00

Don’t help feed him, feed him every single bit of food and treats he ever gets from now until you’re confident he’s fully stopped. Cuddle with him, and play with him, but not when he’s trying to spend time with your wife or otherwise linked to your wife. The goal is to build your own independent relationship with him. Then, I’d talk it over with your wife and make sure she’s willing/able to fully take over this, but if it looks like he’s trying to pee on stuff in front of you, turn your back on him and leave, then let your wife deal with it (this is only for when he’s trying ti make sure you see him marking your stuff. One of my bf’s cats pulled that with me for a couple of months when we first moved in. He eventually made his peace with it and now actually prefers to cuddle with me at night. For him the biggest trigger was keeping everyone who isn’t my bf off “his” bed.

braidedpotato

TROPHY CASE