That will be a triumph @Celia! My own colour choice would be what looks like burgundy and light teal but you'll pick the colour you love best. We're expecting great things...

Hi there Clem. @Ouryve already mentioned the pattern company Wardrobe by Me and they have a step by step video tutorial to accompany their men's jeans pattern. I've made a couple of their other patterns, including a man's jacket, and found them to be accurately sized and well explained.

@Ouryve your reply has made me rethink this. I'm unhappy with the seam so have undone it and am looking at the options you mention. There's an excellent YT video on the 3 needle cast off in combo with short rows - should certainly give a neater result. I love learning about these clever techniques, thanks for the suggestion.

Today I asked a friend who's been knitting for decades how she joins her seams and it seems she just oversews or tacks them. Now that does ring a bell.

Help please - I'm struggling with seaming the shoulders on this top - yarn is dk cotton. Bearing mind that I haven't joined a knit garment seam since I was a child, so getting all this from a book and Youtube.

I wanted a shoulder slope so did stair steps initially, but then decided to redo that with the standard sloped cast off method where you leave the last stitch and slip the first when casting off. I thought that would be easier to seam but it hasn't turned out great.

Here is one shoulder before and the other after using the mattress stitch seam method. Would it be better to undo it, rip back the sloped cast off and use the short row method instead? I'm treating this project as a useful learning experience so happy to redo if it could improve the look of the seams.

Or is there a better technique for seaming this. I have all those side seams to do yet, and there's a roll collar to add. I naively thought this would be the easy part! Can't I overlock the lot?

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Hardback ordered just now @coffeeandcake  .

I don't think I've got that book! so can't really comment though from what I can see on Amazon it looks very comprehensive on materials and tools.

It is @BrendaP. What I want is a reference book on different stitches and techniques and it certainly has that but I find it's sheer size (it's very large and heavy) and comprehensiveness make it a little un-user friendly and daunting. A third of its 350 pages are given over to designing sweaters and accessories which I won't ever need. So I'm wondering if there's a smaller, simpler, more cuddly manual somewhere.

@Ploshkin I'm investigating that blog now, thanks. I still think a book could be a useful thing - knitting seems to lend itself to pictorial illustration so well. There are a few other possibles on Amazon including the "Needlecraft" book HenriettaMaria mentioned, so I'm still open to suggestions.

A friend loaned me this and now I'm thinking of buying a copy. Is this the best for basic techniques? Novice knitter now but I'll want more complicated stuff soon. Youtube is great but by the time you've waded through the adverts and info you don't need, the book is quicker.

This might look familiar - I was thinking of using it in a 2020 comp but guess what? Maybe a kimono-y/duster type jacket? It's one of my favourite colours.

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