Where to Share Your Free Knitting And Crochet Patterns

When I started to design knitting patterns, I wasn't interested in hit rates and traffic to my blog. Over the years I have wanted to increase my traffic. There are a lot of general posts around that give really good advice on how and where to share your posts - these deal with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), commenting on other peoples' blogs, shareable photos, best times to share your posts on social media etc.

I have followed some of this advice in the past and it has helped a lot to drive more readers to my blog (especially SEO is important - since it will make search engines find your content). However, as a knitting blogger, I would also have liked to get more specific links, i.e. a compilation sites that useful for knitting (and crochet) bloggers to promote their content.

Since I haven't found any such list yet, this post specifically lists sites, directories, social media groups etc. for knitting and crochet patterns. It may be useful both for designers that are trying to get more traffc to their blogs as well as crafters trying to find free resources.

So, which sites do you use? Do you have any other recommendations to share or find free patterns? Let me know in the comments.

Pattern Directories and Pattern Sharing Sites

• allfreeknitting.com / allfreecrochet.com: Huge directory of knitting and crochet patterns where you can submit your patterns using a standard web form. You need to create an account to submit your projects - but they might link to your pattern in one of their newsletters which usually provides a spike in my webside traffic.
• craftgawker.com: A curated photo gallery to showcase the works of craft bloggers. You have to create an account and use a web form to submit your work. They also review the submissions in order to make sure that the photos match their standards.
• shareapattern.com: Links to a new free knitting, crochet and sewing pattern each day. You have to register to submit a pattern.
• knittinghelp.com: A site with videos to help knitters learn new techniques that also lists free patterns by category. You can submit a pattern using this web form.
• CraftGossip.com: According to their about page "CraftGossip covers news written by craft people telling you about all the good stuff". To submit your pattern for being linked to, you have to fill in a form. 
• 365crochet.com - crochet patterns only - there is a web form to submit a free pattern to be listed
• knittingpatternsgalore.com / crochetpatternsgalore.com 
• craftroulette.com

Social Media for Knitters and Crocheters

Ravelry

Ravelry is THE site to share and find knitting and crochet patterns - both free and paid. You have to create an account to search their huge pattern directory, but it is well worth it. The search function is excellent. As a designer you can showcase your pattern there - and you also have the fun of seeing other people's projects from your patterns. Over the years Ravelry has provided more than 20% of the traffic to my blog.

Facebook Groups

On Facebook there are a lot of groups for knitters and crocheters - on some of them you can also share your free patterns. Just search for "knitting" or "crochet" and apply for membership.
Groups that are specifically made to post free patterns are  for example (links only work if your are logged in to Facebooks) Ravelry Free Pattern Alerts, Ravelry Free Pattern Alerts (Knit Only), Free Crochet and Knitting Patterns. Other great knitting and crochet groups are Knitting, Love Knitting and Crocheting, CROCHET ADDICT and (if you can read German) nadelspiel ... Whichever group you post your patterns to, make sure to read the group's rules and comply to them and don't spam!

Google+ Groups

On Google+ there are al so a lot of groups for knitters and crocheters - many of them also allow to post links to your free patterns (but as always, read the group rules and comply to them - and don't spam). Just search for knitting/crochet groups and ask to be admitted. Groups that I post my patterns to include: Knitting, Knitting Bloggers, Knit Along on Google+, Knitters Support Group and Some Crochet Too, The Crochet Lounge, Free Crochet Patterns, The Crochet Café and many more ...

Pinterest and Pinterest Group Boards

Pinterest calls itself as "the world’s catalogue of ideas". You can certainly find a lot of inspiration there - not only in the yarny arts but also in recipes, home decor, life hacks etc.
Pinterest is great to store good ideas (by pinning them to your boards), but also to promote your own projects and blog posts, You can do this by pinning to your own boards and using appropriated hash tags. You can encorage others to pin your posts by using Pinterest friendly photos and adding a Pin-It-Button using Pinterest's widget builder.

Group Boards: If you want to find a suitable group board, go to PinGroupie.com, browse the groups and ask to be added as a contributor as indicated (this process may be different for different boards).
If you have created a group board yourself, you can list it at a Group Board Directory.

Group Boards that I post to are: Let's Knit and Crochet, Knitting Knitting Knitting PIN for ALL, Fiber Arts Community Board {P2P}, Yarn Love Community Pinboard, my knit affair ¦ pin here, The WHOot Best Crochet and Knitting, etc. (And no, I'm not the owner of any of these boards so I cannot add you to the list of contributors - you have to ask the owner's permission (politely!) - and it's their decision to accept you or not.) Also, all of these boards have a set of rules to comply to.

Yarny and Crafty Link Parties

If you are featured at a link party, it might create a spike in your blog's hit rate - especially if it's a popular link party and the hosts share the features on their social media channels. Here's a list of link parties that specialise in "yarny" stuff:

• Fiber Tuesdays by Oui Crochet and The Quilting Room with Mel (Tuesday - every week)
• Hookin on Hump Day by MooglyBlog and Petals to Picots (Wednesday - every other week)
• Link and Share Wednesday by OombawkaDesign (Wednesday - every week)
• Link Your Stuff by meertje (Wednesday - every week)
• Yarnalong by Small Things (Wednesday - every week)
• Crafting along by mazkow.com (Saturday - every week)
• Link Your Stuff by annemaries haakblog (Saturday - every week)
• KnittingLove Link Party by the Underground Crafter and Jessie at Home (monthly)

More link parties (not yarn specific) that I regularly frequent can be found here.
Other peoples (crafty) link party lists are for example here and here. One general link party directory can be found here.

Forums etc.

• Knitting Paradise is a forum for knitters to share free resources (especially the Links and Resources Board), to show off their projects to ask for advice and to generally chat about knitting. You have to create an account to post there and you have to be a "regular" to post your own patterns. The boards have rules - read them before posting!
• CrochetVille Community
• Crochet.Community

So, these are my favorite places to promote my patterns. I hope this list was helpful to you and I would love to add more recommendations to my list.

Rettangolini Scarf

Crochet yourself a fun summer accessory with this breezy scarf. It's constructed of rectangular modules that are connected as you go.

This scarf is the crochet version of my (knitted) Little Rectangles Summer Scarf.

This work by Knitting and so on is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Abbreviations and Special Techniques:

• DC = double crochet (US terminology) - as shown in this YouTube video by HappyBerry Crochet 
• Chainless Double Crochet Foundation Stitch (CDCF): A way of starting with double crochet stitches without doing chain stitches first. It is shown in this YouTube video by Gleeful Things.  
• Connected Chainless Double Crochet Foundation Stitch (cCDCF): Yarn over and insert your hook into the bottom of the last CDCF (see picture 1 below), yarn over and pull the yarn through once (see picture 2), then insert the hook of the edge of the next rectangle of the layer below (see picture 3), yarn over and pull through two loops (the one picked up from the next rectangle and the next on your hook (see picture 4), then finish like a normal DC.

How to do a Connected Chainless Double Crochet Foundation Stitch (click on image to enlarge)

Materials
Since gauge doesn't matter here, you can basically use any yarn weight to crochet this scarf. I used the following

• about 120 grams of fingering weight yarn
• a 3.5 mm crochet hook
• a tapestry needle to weave in ends

Construction

This scarf is constructed in layers of DC rectangles (12 DCs wide and 4 rows high). Each layer consists of 5 rectangles one on top of the last one but with an offset of 8 stitches. The layers are at right angles to the layer below - at bit like entrelac, but with spaces inbetween.
The first rectangle of one layer connects with the fifth or last rectangle of the layer below, the second with the fourth rectangle, the third with the third of the row below, the fourth with the second and the fifth with the first from the row below. This construction is shown in the picture below.

If you like your patterns charted, here's a chart of the whole pattern. If you rather like written instructions see below.

Chart (click on image to enlarge)

Instructions

First Layer

First rectangle
Row 1: ch 4, do a double crochet into the first chain, do 10 CDFCs, turn
Row 2: ch3, do 11 DCs (one into each double crochet in the row below), turn
Row 3 = Row 2
Row 4 = Row 2

Second to fifth rectangle
Row 1: starting with the 2nd DC in the row below, do 8 slip stitches, chain 3, do 3 DCs into the remaining DCs of the row below, do 8 CDFCs, turn
Row 2: ch3, do 11 DC (one into each double crochet in the row below), turn
Row 3 = Row 2
Row 4 = Row 2

Second Layer (and all subsequent layers)

First rectangle
Row 0: ch 7 (see illustration A1)
Row 1: ch 3, do 7 DCs (one into each ch of row 0). do 4 DCs into the side of rectangle 5 of the layer below, turn  (see illustration A2)
Row 2: ch3, do 11 DCs (one into each double crochet in the row below), turn
Row 3 = Row 2
Row 4 = Row 2 (see illustration A3)

First rectangle of layers 2 and following (click on image to enlarge)

Second to fifth rectangle
Row 1: starting with the 2nd DC in the row below, do 8 slip stitches, chain 3, do 3 DCs into the remaining DCs of the row below (see illustration B1), do 3 CDFCs, 1cCDFC (connecting it to the corner of the next rectangle in the layer below, see illustration B2), do 4 DCs into the side of this rectangle (see illustration B3), turn
Row 2: ch3, do 11 DCs (one into each double crochet in the row below),
Row 3 = Row 2
Row 4 = Row 2

Second to fifth rectangle of layers 2 and following (click on image to enlarge)

Repeat this layer until the scarf is as long as you want it to be.

Weave in ends and block gently.

This post was featured at Fiber Tuesday Link Party #77 at OuiCrochet. Thank you!

Summertime Garter Stitch Top

Usually, I'm the queen of unfinished sweaters. But for once I finished this summer tunic and I'm quite proud about it. I made a similar one last year but I honestly didn't like the front part (too many short rows) - so I did it again with a straight front part.

Knitted nearly all in garter stitch - except for the very short sleeves, this sweater is great to bring out the color combinations of variegated yarn. It is knitted flat - again except for the sleeves that are knitted in the round.

Dansk / Danish: A danish translation (by Marianne Holmen) can be found here.




This work by Knitting and so on is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.




This is NOT a pattern with stitch counts for various sizes but a tutorial on how to knit a top like this. I will however give my numbers (lengths and widths, stitch and row counts) that I used - just to provide an example (these parts of this blogpost are written in purple).

In this post I assume that your already familiar with the general concept of a top-down raglan sweater. If you've never done this, here's a nice blog post by Knitting Pure and Simple that explains the idea or try to read this Raglan tutorial by Kirsten Tendyke - or knit a top-down pattern such as Buttercup by Heidi Kirrmaier or Gemini by Jane Richmond. (Here's a list of the free, knitted top-down sweaters on Ravelry; you nust be logged in to make this link work.)


Materials

• yarn - I used about 900 meters of Sports weight yarn - more specifically, I used about 5,5 skeins of  Lana Grossa Elastico Print - Colorway 509 (here's the link to the yarn's Ravelry page)
• a needle that fits the yarn, I used 4.5mm circular needles
• a second knitting needle for the grafting at the end
• 4 stitch markers for the top-down raglan part
• scrap yarn to put the arm stitches on
• two safety pins or other removable stitch markers
• a tapestry needle ot weave in ends

Techniques

• Dividing for sleeves in a top-down raglan sweater and adding underarm stitches with the backwards loop cast on - as shown in this YouTube video by Roxane Richardson
• Pick up and Knit - as shown in this YouTube video by VeryPinkKnits
• How to calculate your increases for a raglan sweater: There are several calculators available on the internet:
• at knittingfool.com 
• at woolworks.org 
• http://www.fromthehartle.freeservers.com/KnittingPatterns/TopDownRaglan.html
• at strickeria.ch [in German]
• Grafting in stockinette stitch (aka Kitchener stitch): As shown for example in this YouTube video by WEBS - America's Yarn Store 

Measuring and Swatching
Knit a swatch with the yarn and the needle that you want to use for this sweater and measure your gauge. Usually, I don't swatch - for smaller projects - even if it doesn't fit, I generally can see this early enough, i.e. after about the same time, it'd take to knit the swatch. However, everytime I skipped swatching for a sweater or something similar, I ended up just knitting a bigger swatch, like half a sweater or two thirds of a cardigan :)

Now, either measure your body or take the following measurements on a t-shirt or top that fits you well:

A = width of your neck
B = circumference of your arms
C = from shoulder to under your arms
D = half of the circumference under your arms
E = from your shoulder to your bust
F = half of your bust circumference
G = from your should to your waist
H = half your waist circumference
I = the total length of your sweater
J = half of the circumference of your hips (where you want your sweater to end

Cast on your sweater and knit the yoke

With your measurements and your swatch you can calculate your CO accordingly:
My gauge was 34 garter stitch rows (i.e. 17 ridges) to 10 cm and about 20 sts to 10 cm.
I wanted a neckwidth of about 17 cm (34 sts) and 3cm for each arm (6 sts).

Therefore my CO was 50 sts with stitch markers as follows: 2 sts (front), marker, 6 sts (arm), marker, 34 sts (back), marker, 6 sts (arm), marker, 2 sts (front),

Then start knitting the yoke according to your calculations with a raglan calculator. To be honest, I have never used any of these calculators, I prefer to do increases around the stitch markers - and stop increasing when I have reached the desired width and then going on without increasing until the yoke piece is long enough. But if you want to distribute your increases evenly over the length of your yoke or you have a bigger size, you should calculate your increases.

R1: sl1 purlwise, k all
R2: sl1 purlwise, knit to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb, k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb,  k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb,  k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb, k to end

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until either
a) the arm part reaches your arm circumference (=B)
b) the back part is wide enough (=D)

In case of a) do only increases on the front and back piece, i.e
R2a sl1 purlwise, k to 1 before marker, kfb, slip marker, k to marker, slip marker, kfb, k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, k to marker, slip marker, kfb, k to end

In case of b) do only increases on the arm parts, i.e.
R2a sl1 purlwise, k to 1 marker, slip marker, kfb, k to 1 before marker, kfb, slip marker, k to marker, slip marker, kfbm k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, k to end

When both a) and b) are true, repeat only R1 until the piece is long enough to separate the arm stitches (C).

To reach my intended yoke length (19 cm), I knitted 62 rows, increasing every 2nd row up until row 60 where I only did increases in the arm parts and knitting without any increases in row 62. 
I put the arm stitches on scrap yarn in the 63rd row with the following stitch count (31 (front), 64 (arm), 92 (back), 64 (arm), 31 (front). I cast on 2 sts under each arm (with backwards loop CO)

Now your yoke is finished: Knit one row and put the arm stitches on scrap yarn, i.e.
k to marker, put all stitches from here to the next marker on scrap yarn, remove both stitch markers, CO 2 with backwards loop cast-on (and put a stitch marker between the two newly cast on stitches), knit to next marker, put all stitches from here to the next marker on scrap yarn, remove both stitch markers, CO 2 with backwards loop cast-on (put a stitch marker between the newly cast on stitches), k to end.

The stitch marker you just put will be called underarm markers.

Knitting the underarm part

Now all rows are knitted in garter stitch with the first stitch slipped purlwise. All shaping is done around the underarm markers.

Calculate how many stitches you have to increase (if at all) to reach your bust width - and then calculate how to distribute them among the rows to knit (length = E-C) and then do the increase rows along the underarm marker.
R increase = sl1 purlwise, k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb, k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb, k to end

Since my bust width doesn't differ much from the underarm width, I didn't increase at all. Therefore I knitted 12 cm straight down (about 42 rows with my gauge). 

Now calculate how many stitches you have to decrease to reach your waist width - and then calculated how to distribute them among the rows to knit (length = G-E). Do the decrease rows along the underarm marker.
R decrease = sl1 purlwise, k to two sts before marker, ssk, slip marker, k2tog, k to two stitches before marker, ssk, slip marker, k2tog, k to end

I wanted to reach my waist 43 cm from the shoulder, therefore I knitted 10 more cm straight down and then distributed my decreases over the next 4 cm (or about 15 rows)  (from 45 cm width to 42 cm, i.e. 6 stitches with my gauge, ie. 3 decrease rows with 2 sts decrease per row and side). 

Calculate how many stitches you have to increase to reach your hip width - and then calculate how to distribute them among the rows to knit (length = I-G) and then do the increase rows along the underarm marker.
R increase = sl1 purlwise, k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb, k to one before marker, kfb, slip marker, kfb, k to end

I knitted about 5 cm straight (about 17 rows) and then I increased 8 times every 5th row. That way I widened the piece by 16 stitches per side (i.e. 8 cm with my gauge). I then knitted straight down until I had reached my intended length (about 60 cm).


Knitting the sideways front piece

Once your piece is long enough cast off and cut yarn. Try it on and put a stitch marker to the point where you want your neckline to end, Count the number of rows from the bottom to this point and count the same number on the other front edge.

Now pick up and knit this number of stitches of the selvedge of the left hand side of your front - from the bottom hem of your top up to your stitch marker. To get a nice edge I only picked up the back loops of the selvedge stitches.

Knit straight rows until you have reached the intended width - this should be roughly as wide as your neck width (A). Photo 1 (below) shows how your piece looks after a few knitted rows; it also shows the yarn ends I used as removable stitch markers to mark where I wanted my neckline to end.

To get to the height I wanted, I picked up 74 stitches from the edge. I wanted about 15 cm (a bit less than the neck width used before) - therefore I knitted 52 rows.

Make sure to end on after an even row (counting the pick up and knit row as the first).

With your second needle pick up the stitches on the other selvedge (i.e. right hand side of your piece) from the stitch marker to the bottom (if you use circulars, you can start from the bottom hem as well). Here I also picked up only the back loops (i.e. the ones closest to the WS) to get a consistent look.
Photo 2 (above) shows how the piece looks with the two needles, just before grafting.

Graft both sides together in stockinette stitch.


Sleeves

Put the arm stitches of one arm from your scrap yarn to your needle(s) and pick up 4 underarm stitches (i.e. 2 above the backwards loop CO stitches you made when you transfered the arm stitches to the scrap yarn plus 1 at each side in the gap between these stitches and the live ones). Place a stitch marker (end of round marker) in the middle of these underarm stitches.

Row 1: p2tog, purl to last two stitches, p2tog
Row 2: k2tog, k to last two stitches, k2tog
Row 3: p all
Row 4: k all
Repeat rows 3 and 4 until your sleeves are as long as you'd want them to be and bind off.
I knitted a total of 18 rounds before doing my BO round.

Do the same with the second sleeve.


Weave in ends an block lightly.