Holy crap, will wonders never cease?  While I may have killed the Polar Bear Patterns store yesterday (seriously — I did.  It's completely dead) — today I have managed to provide two free downloads to both of my readers!  

A couple of years ago, I began creating short "tutorials" for the Friday Group class at Farmhouse Knit Shop.  Everyone seemed to really like them — or at least they didn't have the nerve to say they didn't to my face.  The exception (of course) was Rock Star, who apparently really, really didn't like the one on the "Fur Stitch".

So as a sort of experiment, I'm trying to make some of the best ones available here at TessKnits.com for downloading.  Some will be free; some of the REALLY good ones may end up being a paid download, if I can figure out how to do that.  (Believe me, you probably have a while to go before I get to that point.)

The only catch is, you need to become a "registered user" at TessKnits.com in order to download this stuff.  (ETA:  and look up there at that snazzy new box at the top of the sidebar, where I think I have now provided the capability to login and register, so you can actually get the downloads…  wowsers, good thing I know a lot more about knitting than about being a webmaster.)

Registering basically means I get your email address.  I'm pretty much not likely to do a whole lot with that, either, but at some point I might send some emails — probably about knitting stuff — maybe whenever I post another download, or something like that.  In that event, I'll follow all the nice rules about not spamming, once I learn them.

The files are in .pdf format, which is pretty standard for downloading files.  You will need the Adobe Acrobat reader, which is free for downloading here.

(drumroll, please) And here are the first two downloads!  Enjoy!

You will also find the full list of available downloads by clicking on the "Downloads" page, among those blue tabs at the top.

Stitches:  Ribbing — one of the first items in the "Stitches" series, this one-page tutorial includes some basic information about ribbings, plus stitch patterns for some of the less-common ribbing patterns for you to try.  Also includes Mistake "Rib", a stretchy bind-off technique for ribbing, and a bit about how to accomplish "clean" or "unbroken" stripes in ribbing.  Click Here to View, then Print or Save a Copy

Increasing — a handy one-page summary of the four knitting increases, with notes on how they are made, where they appear, names and abbreviations.  Click Here to View, then Print or Save a Copy