Community
Named places, not search suggestions: the online forums that are actually busy, the podcasts that have lasted, and the festivals worth traveling to.
Three places carry most of the English-language knitting conversation online. They are not interchangeable — each is good at something different.
Free to join. Each pattern has its own page, and knitters post their finished versions there with the yarn, needle size and modifications they used — on a widely knitted pattern that runs to hundreds or thousands of examples, which tells you far more than the designer's photo when you are deciding whether a pattern will suit you. The forums are organized into groups by technique, designer, yarn brand and region.
The largest general knitting forum we know of, with a steady stream of finished objects, work-in-progress questions and yarn discussion. The pace is fast and the tone is casual — good for browsing, less good for getting a careful answer to a specific technical problem.
A dedicated troubleshooting subreddit, and the best free resource we know of for the 'I dropped a stitch twelve rows ago and I don't know what to do' category of problem. Post a clear photo of the actual fabric; that is what makes the difference between a useful answer and a guess.
Whichever forum you post in, the answer quality depends almost entirely on the photo. Shoot the fabric flat, in daylight, close enough that individual stitches are distinguishable, and say what you were doing when it went wrong. "Row 14 of the chart, I have one stitch too many" gets a precise answer; "help, it looks weird" gets guesses.
Knitting podcasts are a large and uneven field, and many of the ones still passed around in recommendation lists stopped publishing years ago. These four have run for years, are still releasing new episodes, and are easy to find in any podcast app or on YouTube.
Gayle and Sharlene have been publishing for years and keep to a steady fortnightly rhythm — of the shows we follow, the one we can most often count on having a new episode ready. Projects, yarn and what is happening in the wider knitting world, in a format much closer to knitting alongside a friend than to a produced show.
Staci Perry answers listener questions each week, one technique problem at a time. The one to subscribe to if you want the answer to "why does my sock heel look like that" rather than knitting chat — and each episode pairs with her video tutorials.
Felicia Lo of SweetGeorgia Yarns interviews knitters, spinners, dyers and shop owners. The closest current equivalent to the in-depth interview podcasts of a few years ago, with a strong dyeing and color thread running through it.
Greg Cohoon and Pam Maher, with an archive going back well over a decade. Unhurried project talk with a fair amount of fiber-festival reporting — good company for a long stretch of stockinette.
A fiber festival is the one reliable way to handle a lot of yarn before buying it, and to meet the people who made it. Dates shift year to year, so check the organizer's site before booking.
Well enough known that knitters plan a garment months ahead specifically to wear there — the "Rhinebeck sweater" is a genuine subgenre.
A long-running festival with a strong emphasis on the animals and the fleece side of the craft, not only the finished yarn.
Edinburgh's yarn festival, held at Edinburgh Academy. The organizers describe it as a festival of crafts, workshops, talks, food and music for knitters, crocheters, weavers and spinners. It replaced the long-running Edinburgh Yarn Festival, whose own site is no longer up.
Held in a livestock auction mart, which gives it a distinctly rural character. Strong on British breed-specific wool.
Local groups are genuinely harder to list, because they turn over quickly and rarely have a website. Two approaches actually work. First, ask in a yarn shop — most either host a knit night or know who does, and shop staff keep better track of local groups than the internet does. Second, use Ravelry's group directory, which can be filtered by location; even a dormant local group usually has someone who will tell you where people moved to.
One fixed point in the calendar is World Wide Knit in Public Day, held annually in June. Local organizers register events publicly, which makes it one of the few reliable ways to find nearby knitters in a single search.
New to knitting? Start with the basics or look up unfamiliar terms in the knitting dictionary. Shopping for yarn? Our yarn substitution guide can help you find the right replacement if your local shop doesn't carry exactly what the pattern calls for.