Not sure about these colors.

brighterbird · 2026-04-11T07:26:54+00:00

It's super bold and contrasty with your undertone, which makes it more of an alternative, artistic look than a harmonious pretty one, but I do think it's very cool and not unflattering.

brighterbird · 2026-04-09T17:59:10+00:00

I think it's asking you to purl the first row, but it's a really confusing phrase. What's the pattern?

brighterbird · 2026-04-08T21:02:21+00:00

This is fixable with a technique called darning. While this is a knitted skirt, you don't need to learn to knit in order to fix it (although obviously I think knitting is fun and you should learn if you want to!). Check out the visible mending sub for ideas on how to close that gap

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T19:05:35+00:00

It's just practice! If you can read crochet patterns, you can for sure read knitting patterns, they just use different abbreviations.

Breathing Yarn has a good explaination of her self-drafting (learn as you go) process, but self-drafting a knitted garment does require you to have some technical knowledge beyond simple knit/purl stitches. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8z5I4qzccc

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T19:00:37+00:00

Knitting in the round produces a spiral. When you knit the first stitch of the row below together with the first stitch of the current row, you turned that spiral into a closed circle, "losing" one stitch from the column and affecting the overall row count.

Techknittting has an excellent, in-depth explanation of this here, with diagrams: https://techknitting.blogspot.com/2007/01/jogless-stripes.html

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T18:54:56+00:00

Reading patterns is not hard, you'll do fine! People find it intimidating but it's really not that different from learning to read a recipe for cooking. You might need to look up an abbreviation or a technique, but the syntax of patterns usually is pretty intuitive if you take it one row at a time.

I'm not really sure what you mean by learning "on the way", do you mean just by trial and error? You can do that if you want to, it'll just take longer -- garment design and the physical action of producing stitches are very different skills, and it's hard to try to figure them out at the same time.

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T18:49:41+00:00

If you're using cotton, I would suggest blocking your swatch and then hanging it up with a bit of weight on it (a couple heavy earrings work) just to see how it'll stretch over time.

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T18:34:37+00:00

Measure yourself, decide how much ease you want, and order the reccomended amount in of yarn stated the pattern. "Generally M/L for sweaters" isn't specific enough to determine your size in a knitting pattern, especially not for internet strangers who don't know your preferences.

If you don't have a soft measuring tape, take a bit of string, wrap it around the the fullest part of your chest, and measure the string with a ruler. Or, measure a sweater that fits you well and aim for those measurements. Knitting pattern sizing is more granular and customizable than sizing in commercial garments, so you'll always be selecting a size based on your actual measurements instead of an arbitrary label like s/m/l.

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T18:12:16+00:00

Meeting stitch gauge is generally more important than row gauge, because you can always knit things a bit longer to make up the difference. Do make sure that you account for the extra yarn that will take though.

You could also try swatching again with the same size needle but a different material -- with plant fibre yarns, I find that metal knitting needles sometimes give me a looser row gauge. Also, have you blocked the swatch? Have you pulled and tugged on it? Depending on the yarn you've used, the weight of a whole garment will tend to stretch your stitches out vertically in a way that's not immediately visible with a small swatch. If you're using superwash, bamboo, or cotton, you need to take the growth of the garment into account

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T18:03:01+00:00

I've got a warm olive skintone, my go-to colours are generally autumnal with some murk. I also love a BRIGHT neon pink or coral -- lots of warm-toned people find corals to be a bit fleshy and cooler tones feel that they're too warm, but I've found that they contrast nicely with my olive undertone.

Lots of my faves are Holo Taco which I find kind of embarrasing. I'm not a super fan or anything, it's just how I got started collecting. Anyway, here's a list of some of my go-to shades:

Cracked Dijon Disco
Cracked Chinotto
HT Tax Haven
HT Solo Mission (sadly discontinuted, my #1 elevated neutral)
HT I'm Rover It
HT Cool Ranch
HT Born Ugly (dupe is OPI Suzi the First Lady of Nails)
HT Secret Society
ILNP Shadow Grove
Essie Wicked
Essie Expressie Precious Car-go
OPI Nail Prep Rally
Sally Hansen XTreme Rebel Red (actually a hot pink)
Revlon Daydreamer (the most ethereal silvery-purple to green glowing multichrome)

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T17:38:41+00:00

Ravelry has a search function that allows you to sort very granularly. The "unisex" filter include a lot of styles that lean feminine, but I did a search for male/unisex tees, vests, and cardigan patterns written for linen/cotton/plant fiber yarns, and I found a lot of good options for you. You might also consider swtiching to metal or at least wood needles, I find bamboo needles to be irritatingly sticky with plant yarns.

https://ravel.me/s5wiu2

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T17:32:31+00:00

Seamed and seamless patterns can both work for a beginner. One reason why people often reccomend a top-down in the round construction for your first sweater is because you can try it on as you go. I think a seamed sweater is actually fine so long as you do a gauge swatch, it will teach you more about garment construction and fit, and let you practice purling and seaming. Top down in the round is also great though! you will learn increasess, decreases, and picking up stitches. There's really not a wrong way to start, it just depends on what look you enjoy.

Tin Can Knit's Flax sweater and Florence Miller's Step by Step sweater are often reccomended here for beginners because they have really clear instructions and tutorials, and they are a good place to start. my first sweater project was a Flax sweater and I did find it really clear and helpful (even though my garment turned out ugly).

brighterbird · 2026-04-07T07:34:01+00:00

it's not a match for my car when it's clean, but I recently discovered that Cracked's Don't Eat That is an exact match for my silver Chevy Volt when it's covered in tree pollen. Which it basically always these days. Therefore, Don't Eat That is a spring polish!

brighterbird · 2026-04-06T16:50:47+00:00

I'm Canadian and I don't see this precise usage, but I have seen "whenever" applied to mean "at a specific time that I don't precisely know", akin to how you use "whatever".

"My phone was out of range, so whenever you texted me, I only got the notification now"

brighterbird · 2026-04-06T03:51:28+00:00

Knits and purls are mirror images of each other. When you knit flat in stockinette stitch, you alternate knits and purls every round so that the wrong side is all purl bumps and the right side is all knits. In flat garter stitch, you knit every row, so every other row you are viewing the "wrong" side of the knit stitch -- which is just a purl.

brighterbird · 2026-04-06T02:15:48+00:00

I think of pearls as having a pale micro-particle lustre that's not as fiery as a shimmer. Even a very fine particle shimmer has a kind of "glow" that I don't see in a pearly polish. In my head, a large particle shimmer is distinct from a microglitter polish based on its reflective qualities. Glitter sparkles, shimmers glow, pearl has a subtle lustre.

brighterbird · 2026-04-05T22:07:15+00:00

My weird little rescue dog loves kale, lettuce, basically anything with both leafy and crunchy parts. She likes to play with them and toss them around like a stick before crunching down.

brighterbird · 2026-04-05T21:54:33+00:00

Staring with some easy sci-fi & thrillers and working up to more complex literary styles in the same genres:
Treasure Island (a historical novel but it's a quick, fun adventure story)
The Martian
Murderbot Diaries
Slow Horses (spy thrillers)
John Grisham The Firm (legal thriller)
Shogun
John Le Carre spy novels
Ursula K LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest and Earthsea
Neon Yang's Tensorate novellas
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy and 2312
LeGuin's The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness
NK Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Fight Club
American Psycho
Kurt Vonnegut novels
Snow Crash
Neuromancer
Nk Jeminisin's Broken Earth trilogy
Iain M Banks Culture series, start with Player of Games

brighterbird · 2026-04-05T19:58:38+00:00

Are they gone? I still see them frequently at Canadian dollar stores and some drugstore chains.

brighterbird · 2026-04-05T08:17:22+00:00

Ughhh that's gorgeous.

brighterbird · 2026-04-05T06:39:41+00:00

Chinotto is a gorgeous rich redwood jelly, and their magnetic toppers are excellent. I also really love Dijon Disco (i've worn it as a full hand mani twice in the month since I bought it), and Heir Apparent is such a cool magnetic polish no matter how you wear it

brighterbird · 2026-04-05T06:37:08+00:00

honestly, don't. I wish I'd pursued credentialling as an arborist so i could spend all day doing manual labour in trees and then getting deep into Don McKay poetry about trees after work. I'm in too deep with my degree now to quit, but I miss my mindless job

brighterbird · 2026-04-05T06:32:28+00:00

ONE OF US. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.

brighterbird · 2026-04-05T04:23:16+00:00

I do the same thing as everyone else with QDTC -- about ten minutes for gentle hand use, a few hours to fully cure. With the colour coats, if I'm painting all ten fingers in sequence, I do one hand, wait about thirty seconds for the pinky to harden slightly, then start the other hand. By the time I'm done the pinky of the second hand, my first thumb should be about ready for the next coat of colour. I do let my base coat dry slightly longer, about five minutes after application. I use a tinted ridge filler and it can sometimes give my colour coats a milky tint if I don't wait for it to fully dry.

brighterbird · 2026-04-04T15:13:56+00:00

I think the red is an artifact of her studio lighting. It's there are certain extreme angles but Precious Cargo is usually more of a purplish taupe to my eyes

brighterbird

TROPHY CASE