Sunday, September 30, 2007

How to Knit a Circle

I've been searching the net for awhile now to find how one can knit a flat circle. There's endless instructions for crochet and nothing for knitting pretty much, unless it's a fancy doily or something that would have to be adapted somehow. So I got to thinking about some flowers I'd made for my daughter's mittens and how the petals were rounded on the end and I fiddled a bit. I got a small circle (about 1 3/4" or approx. 5cm in diameter), and will continue to experiment to see if I can get it bigger. I used a crafting cotton, but I would recommend something not as stiff because it needs to be flexible so you can tweak it a little by stretching it. Also, I would definitely recommend blocking. Sadly I can't post a photo because my camera is broken, but here's what I did.

I used size 4mm needles (6US)

CO 4 stitches
Row 1: KF&B of first stitch, knit to end
Row 2: KF&B first stitch, purl to end
Repeat these two rows until you have 9 stitches on your needle, ending with a knit row.
Next row: P across all stitches
Next row: K2tog, K to end
Next row: P2tog, P to end
Repeat these two rows until you have 4 stitches on your needle, ending with a knit row.
Bind off purlways.

Definitions:
K - knit
P - purl
K2tog - knit two together
P2tog - purl two together
KF&B - knit front and back of same stitch

I suppose you could always knit several rows and then reduce until you had a few stitches to draw up together, but you would always have that little hole in the middle or it would be messy looking. This looks like a relatively tidy stocking stitch circle. It's not perfect, but it is definitely round! Good luck!