How to: Nut-Hap tutorials

I absolutely love to learn new techniques. I'm a sucker for a nifty way to make things, and I love to finesse my knitting. Sometimes it can be overwhelming to look at a new pattern and realise that it includes a heap of things you've not done before, so we aim to hold your hand with some of these techniques.

Image © Kate Davies Designs Ltd

My Nut-Hap design for The Book of Haps features a few tricks to give a really polished finished scarf. First up is the tubular cast on - my all-time favourite way to give your knitting a professional finish. Here's our YouTube video to talk you through how to work the cast on:

Tubular cast-on method for any project, using Jen Arnall-Culliford's Nut-Hap as an example.

Nut-Hap then uses tucks to create an architectural shape to the lower edge. These are worked in with the ribbing of the body, and we've made videos to show you how to do the separating row:

Learn how to work a separating row for a tuck in your knitting, based upon Nut-Hap by Jen Arnall-Culliford

And another video to show you how to work the joining row:

Learn how to join your knitting to form a tuck as featured in Jen Arnall-Culliford's Nut-Hap

I do hope that you will find these tutorials helpful. You can see more over on our YouTube channel: Arnall-Culliford Knitwear on YouTube

Masterclasses

Just in case you've had an unrequited longing to learn the Channel Island cast-on method, I thought you might like to know that I've got a Masterclass article in the latest issue of The Knitter (Issue 73). It's all about different cast-on methods and there will be an article on casting off next month as well.

And while we are on the topic of casting on... I've been asked a few times why it's sometimes "cast on" and other times "cast-on", so I figured I might as well commit the answer to the blog, and save on typing it out again. :) As you might expect, it all comes down to grammar.

If you are instructing someone to cast on a certain number of stitches, cast on is being used as a verb, and as such does not require a hyphen. E.g. Cast on 65 sts.

If you are describing a part of the knitted fabric, such as a cast-on edge, then cast-on is now an adjective, and it's common to hyphenate compound adjectives such as this. E.g. Return to the cast-on stitches and unzip the crochet chain.

Confusion starts when talking about types of cast-on method. E.g. The Channel Island cast-on. In these instances I tend to consider cast-on as an adjective to method, rather than as a noun in its own right. So even if the word method is omitted I hyphenate it.

I'm no grammar specialist, and I'm indebted to Helen Spedding on The Knitter for explaining this to me when I first started on the magazine (after I had just added hyphens to the start of every pattern just before deadline - oops!), but I do love a geek fact, and this seems to fall into that category quite nicely!