Transcript

So let’s explore some easy projects for a first time circular knitter.

You’ve already got a lot of options ahead of you because when you knit circularly you don’t have to seam anything, you don’t have any wrong sides to worry about, so it’s actually easier to start circular knitting than it is to start by using straight needles.

The first project I would recommend is a headband.

This is a super easy project that’s available on my website. And it’s easy because you cast on, you knit straight, and then you cast off. There’s no shaping involved at all. If you wanted to even omit the color work part, you could.

This is great because there’s no shaping. The number that you cast on is the same number of stitches you have when you cast off. You’re just using a circular needle to not have to sew anything up and to never have to knit the wrong side.

So that’s a great first time project.

Then you might be ready to move on to something that’s knit exactly the same way but in a larger diameter like an infinity scarf.

This kind of scarf you can wrap around your neck several times. And it’s easy.

Here’s another circular scarf. It’s easy because the number of stitches that you start with at your cast on edge are the same number of stitches that you’ll bind off at the end. No shaping involved at all.

The next project you could do is something that does require a little bit of shaping.
You could do a hat, which starts straight and then starts decreasing. You can’t do on a 16 inch circular but you can do on double points or on two circular needles or on the magic loop method. So this is for when you’re ready to branch into some shaping.

And then finally you can move on to a hat that has a special stitch pattern or some kind of design in it where you would start casting on a number and then you would do some shaping in the stitch pattern as you go.

So those are some ideas for first time circular knitting. Some easy projects for you to get your feet wet with.

Transcript

I’m going to show you a trick for making jogless stripes in the round.

Now, what a jog is, is when you finish one round and you start the next round and if there is a color change between those two rounds, it’s really obvious that the colors don’t line up.

So what you end up with is a striped project where your stripes don’t line up on the sides. And that would be at the end of round marker.

So I’m going to show you the trick that I know to make the stripes a little less joggy.

And a lot of it will block out when you wet your project. Remember, always block your finished pieces. It takes things from homemade to handmade.

So you will either steam block or you will wet block and as the piece is drying, you just kind of tug the stripes into place. And they will look a lot less, and they will look a lot better lined up than they would if you didn’t do this trick.

So I’m coming around now and I’m finishing the last three stitches on the last round of my orange stripe.

My stripes are four rounds high. So four rounds of orange, four rounds of blue, four rounds of orange.

I’m going to finish my last three stitches of orange. One, two, three. Here’s my end of round marker. I’m going to slip it over.

And now what I’m going to do is I’m going to start my blue.

So for this trick, you actually do nothing different on your first round. So the first round of jogless stripes is that you just start knitting your new color.

So I’m going to knit this round blue. So I’m approaching the end of the blue round. Getting down there, that’s six stitches left, five, four, three left, two left, last blue stitch.

Now this stitch feels a little loose because the orange isn’t anchored to anything. That’s totally fine.

I’m going to slip my marker. And what’s going to happen now on the second round of blue is I’m going to slip the first stitch as if to pearl. I’m going to slip it over. And then I’m going to knit the rest of the round normally.

I’m going to give a tug on that orange yarn so that things kind of line up here. And what that does is it evens out the height of the rounds.

So when you’ve got your slip stitch here, it means there are actually three blue stitches instead of four. Just in that one column. And the next stripe up, you’ve got three orange stitches instead of four. The same thing all the way up. And that helps the height of the stripes look like they are the same. So you don’t get an obvious jog here at all.

You can see, it looks just the same.

And you will see a little bit of puckering before you block it. That’s just because you’re carrying the stripe that you’re not using, you’re carrying that color up the inside. And that will all even out with a nice soak and a dry, especially if you give it some tugs.

So when you do your color change round, the first stitch of the new color you knit normally and you continue to finish the round.

When you get back to the second round of the new color, you would slip the first stitch as if to pearl and then finish the round like normal.

And then continue on with your blue or whatever your color is until it’s time to knit with the next color.

Start it just like normal. Knit the first stitch in orange or your other color. Finish the round.

And then when you get back to the second round of orange, slip the first stitch as if to pearl, and finish the round.

And that is one method for creating jogless stripes in the round.

Transcript

If you would like to do small diameter circular knitting, you have a couple options.

The two circular needle method is great for making tiny diameter things. You could get as small as you wanted to with down to just like two stitches on this side and two stitches on that side with two circulars.

You can also do the same things with the magic loop. This is the cuff of a mitten. But if it was going to be something that got smaller and smaller and smaller, you could absolutely do that with magic loop. In fact, you normally do.

If you’re knitting a mitten magic loop, you can keep the same mitten on here as it shrinks down and down because of your decreases, down to the very tip.

It’s easy to see that kind of thing here at the top of my hat. We’re going to look at it from the top so you can see how much smaller it gets.

But when you look at it from the side here, you can see that first I was knitting around and around on this larger diameter, and as I got close to the top, I decreased, decreased, down to the very last round which had probably no more than ten stitches on it, and you can do that on the same circular needle as long as you’re using either two circulars at the same time or magic loop.

You cannot shrink down to a small diameter on a 16 inch circular because you have to have enough stitches to go all the way around.

So if you want to knit small diameters, use a long circular or two circulars.

Transcript

I’m going to talk to you a little bit about large diameter circular knitting.

When you use a really, really long needle like this one, you use it in exactly the same way as you would a shorter circular needle.

So you’re going to be knitting around and around and around with the tail signifying the beginning and end of the round just the same way as you would something very, very long.

You can also use large diameter circular needles to knit flat things.

So this is a shawl that I’m knitting on a super long circular needle that is not in the round. I’m just knitting back and forth on it. But this kind of project, obviously, couldn’t fit all scrunched up on to a straight needle. This is another reason for keeping a lot of large diameter circular needles in your needle stash.

And that is the basics of how to knit with a large diameter circular needle.

Transcript

I’m going to show you how to prevent and fix circular knitting inside out.

Now, there are times when you would want to knit inside out for circular knitting, mainly when you have to do a lot of reverse stockinette which means from the outside you would need to pearl every single round. Not a lot of people want to do that so you would flip your knitting inside out and knit every single round which would give you pearl on the outside.

But sometimes we find ourselves knitting inside out accidentally when we didn’t mean to. That happens a lot when you’re at the very beginning stages when you’ve only knitted a round or two and it can flip-flop inside out really easily because there’s no yarn to hold it down.

It cannot happen accidentally when you’ve got a lot of fabric hanging down. Like I would never accidentally start knitting this sock inside out. It just couldn’t happen. I would have to do it on purpose. So I’m going to show you on a medium length sample where its easy to flip it inside out on purpose but I would definitely notice if I was knitting along and it was starting to crawl because I actually do have to use my thumbs to flip it inside out.

So in order to get oriented here, we have to remember that when we knit in the round we’re knitting with the needles on the closest side of the cloth to our body. So if I’m looking straight down at it, it would be at 6:00. If the point farthest away from your body is 12:00, we’re knitting at 6:00.

And that’s the way we want to do it for circular knitting to knit right side out. And that means that the correct side of the garment or the fabric that you’re making is on the visible side to the audience sitting all around you. Just imagine people looking at it from every angle. They can see the correct side, and the needles are closest to you body, you’re knitting right side out.

Now, if you find yourself knitting on the opposite side of the circle, the part that’s farthest away from you, you’re knitting at 12:00 and the general public around you can see the inside of your intended fabric, like if you don’t want it to be reverse stockinette, if this is actually the outside but they are seeing the inside, that means you’re knitting inside out.

So it’s a really simple fix. If you’re going around here and you realize that you’re still looking at the inside of the garment but everyone else is seeing the outside and you say, “oh, yeah. I’m looking across the circle. What’s closest to me is not where my needles are,” simply flip your work back right side out, and orient the needles closest to your body.

So that’s how you fix and prevent inside out circular knitting.

Transcript

I’m going to show you how to prevent ladders in your circular knitting.

You don’t have to worry about ladders showing up when you’re knitting on a
short circular needle because there’s no break between the needle points.

However, when you’re knitting circularly where you divide the number of
stitches over either either side of the cable or over several needles, you
do have to be mindful of what’s happening in between those sections. So
I’ll show you here what I do to prevent ladders forming in my work. And
there was really nothing I could do when I was a beginning circular
knitter. This is just something that comes with practice. But I’ll try to
break down for you in words what I do with my fingers, all the little
subtle things to prevent a ladder. So I’ll show you first on a magic loop
example. I’ve got my front needle loaded in and my back needle pulled out
and around and it helps that this is not the first couple rounds because
I’ve got this nice, stable foundation of an entire sock to help hold things
together. But these are the same tricks that I use when I’m starting off
circular knitting. So the first thing I do is that I pinch the front
section of yarn against the back section of yarn, so the needle and the
cable in this case. I pinch them together really hard here to begin the
first stitch. You can see my thumb is holding everything down and I can’t
see anything but that first stitch. So I’ve got my needle pulled out and
around. I am going to put the yarn behind the needle because this first
stitch is a knit. I’m going to stick my needle in and then I’m going to
really give a yank-way more than I would on any other stitch. Again, we
want our stitches to be nice and loose so that they can slide over the
join, but because stitches on the end and the beginning tend to be
naturally looser than their brothers that are caught in between, in the
middle of the row, you’re going to counteract that looseness by giving a
nice, firm tug. So now I’m going to wrap the yarn around the needle, pull
up a new stitch, and I’m really pushing hard with my finger here to make
sure that my needles stay touching. I’m going to put my needle into the
second stitch, tighten again.

So I’m just tugging it all the way and then I can stop doing that. I don’t
do it anymore on the third, fourth and fifth stitches as I go. And what
that means is that what I’ve got here is a really tight, last stitch on the
other side-tighter than I would normally want it if it was in the middle
here. And that will all even out when I’m knitting on this side again and
I get to this stitch and it’s the last stitch because the last stitch is
always a little bit looser than the ones in the middle. So that’s pretty
easy because in magic loop you only have a front needle and a back needle
to hold together and it can flatten out. But what if you have three
needles that you have to worry about? First of all, I’m going to find
where I need to start. I’m going to follow the working yarn back to this
stitch. This is the last stitch I worked because it’s got the working yarn
coming from it. And I’m going to do basically the same thing.

I’m going to stick my empty needle into the first stitch that needs to be worked here
and I’m going to use my thumb to hold all three and give a really strong
tug on the last stitch that I worked. And when I wrap the yarn around my
working needle, I’ve got it really snugged up close to the needle from
which my last stitch is coming. So I’m going to slide it down and again
pull really, really, really hard-not so hard that you break your yarn-and
I’m tugging again as I bring it around to my second stitch, and then I’m
good to go. And because I pulled so hard, these two stitches-the last one
from this needle and the first one from this needle-are just snugged up
really close to each other. I’m going to show you that one more time. I’m
going to finish this needle, keeping a nice, loose tension here. And when
I get to my last stitch, it’s going to feel looser than the other ones do,
just because of the nature of the last stitch. So I give a little tug
down. I’m constantly adjusting my fabric, sort of evening out the tension.

I’ve got an empty needle in my right hand. I load up the tip of the
needle in my left hand. And I’m going to make this really snug with the
last one. So I’m going to stick my empty needle in, I’m going to pull nice
and hard, and I’m going to get them just right up against each other there
and sort of trap the yarn, pull up the new stitch, give another tug, knit
the next stitch, give another tug, and now I’m good to go. And this method
produces no ladders for me. I haven’t had ladders in over a decade from
when I started knitting circularly, so if you follow these tips, you too
can avoid getting ladders in your circular knitting.

Transcript

Now I’m going to show you how to fix some mistakes in circular knitting. These tricks also work for knitting flat with straight needles. So what I’ve got here is I’ve put in some accidental purls here in my c of stockenette [?]. So I’m going to show you a couple different methods of going back to fix them. The first method I’m going to show you is called tinking because tink T-I-N-K is knit backwards. So we’re not actually knitting backwards we’re unknitting one stitch at a time but in knitters terminology we call this to tink. So when I knit a stitch I put my right needle into the left needle and add a new loop of yarn. When I tink I put my left needle into the stitch on the right hand side but instead of putting it into the top stitch that I just made, that’s the one I want to get rid of so I actually stick it into the stitch one row below . So I stick my left hand needle in front to back, remove my right hand needle and pop out the yarn. Stick the left tip into the front of the stitch, the row below the one that you’re trying to get rid of and pop out the yarn. So we’re going to tink back to this accidental purl. I’ve got three more to go. Three, two, one and here’s the stitch that I need to undo. because it’s a purl I need to move the yarn back to the front where it was when I made the mistake. And again stick the left hand needle into the front of the stitch no matter what it is, remove the right hand needle, and pop it out. See, there’s where I put my yarn in front. I’m going to now move it to the back because this is supposed to be a knit and I’m ready to knit on. So that’s how to tink.

Now I’m going to show you a great way to fix mistakes that are not on the round that you just did way down here a couple rounds ago I made an accidental purl. So now I’m going to show you how to drop down just this one column, fix the mistake and ladder back up. This is such a nice alternative if all you know how to do is take your needles out and frog which means to rip it, rip it, rip it until you get back to your mistake. We don’t want to waste a whole inch of knitting. So instead we’re going to drop down. I can see here that the offending purl is in this column which tops out with this stitch. So this is the stitch I need to drop. I’m going to do the brave thing, take it off the needle, pull out the yarn, and what I need to do is I need to drop down on purpose, pulling like a run in stockings, pulling our every single ladder until I get..there is the offending purl. I’m going to pull this one out and now I have to ladder back up without making any purl stitches. I’m going to take my crochet hook just take it into the front of the stitch because this is knitting, I want to make knit stitches. So just like in knitting the instrument of your choice goes into the front and the yarn is behind the stitch. I’m going to grab the ladder, pull it through the loop. There we go. And I’m going to do it again and again until I get all the way back to the top. Grab the ladder, pull it through the loop, grab the ladder, pull it through the loop. Make sure you grab the ladders in order. This is the lowest one so it has to come next. Grab the ladder, pull it up through the loop. Tow more to go. Last one. And n ow I have to make sure that when I put my stitch back on the needle I don’t put it on twisted. If I just slipped it right onto the needle here you can see the left leg of the loop is in front, where what I want, stitches that are mounted correctly have their right legs in front. So often when I am laddering back up with a crochet hook I end up with the left leg in front so I could either twist it around and slip it on or I could slip it straight on and then just turn it with my fingers.

You can ladder down a whole chunk of stitches at a time. Like if you’re doing a cable and the cable is let’s say six stitches wide and you’ve made it cross the wrong direction you can drop down six stitches. It’s a little tedious but it’s better than pulling out, let’s say if you’re making a 40 inch sweater that’s a lot faster. But if you do need to frog here’s how you do it. You’re going to take the needles completely out, and on a good solid wool yarn they’re not really going to go anywhere. If you’re taking out something smooth like moisturized cotton or silk you might get stitches dropping down their ladders without you telling them to but in this nice single ply wool here everything is sitting right where I left it so I’m going to drop down to let’s say, this round here. That’s my mistake. I’m going to rip it, rip it, rip it, until I get down to where my thumb is. Let’s do one more round. Here’s the mistake. It’s now out. The yarn is coming from this stitch so I know that that is the stitch that I just knit and I’m going to pick up the stitches in front of it making sure that the right leg is in front. You really don’t have to worry about the loops falling down, especially with wool and something big and bulky like this. They’re not going to disappear on you. You can see I can pick them up really easily. And so you would just continue to pick up stitches like that all the way around until you’re back to knitting again. So that’s frogging. unknitting one by one is tinking. You can also drop a column and ladder back up with a crochet hook. That’s the way to fix mistakes in circular knitting.

Transcript

I’m now going to show you how to prevent a twist when you join to knit in the round.

So I’ve just cast on all my stitches. And the easiest way for me to make sure there’s no twists is to align all my little cast on, my ridge here, in the inside of the circle.

So that you can see, make sure you can trace it all the way around and there’s no twists. When you’re sure that there’s no twists, then it’s safe to join to knit in the round.

But I’ll show you what a twist looks like and how to fix one.

So as you cast on, your hands are all over the cast on and they may inadvertently give you something that looks like this after you’re done casting on.

If you’re casting on a really large number of stitches, they will flare out. And sometimes, even though they’re not twisted, they’ll look kind of flared and messy.

And the way to see if you have a twist, I think, is to lay it down on the table, and press against the table, and really hold it down.

So I’m going to start from the right side. I’m going to hold this cast on edge down against the table. Push it down as I go. And the closer I get, the more I can see, oh, yeah, there’s a whole lot of twists here.

So then you can kind of push the twists around until it looks to you like you’ve got no twists. And there I over-corrected so I’m going to take it back one,

And make sure, I’m going to trace it with my finger, it’s always great to check several times before you join to knit in the round because, you know, we’re so excited to start a new project. We join. Ah, now we’re knitting in the round and we just knit lots and lots of inches before we check anything and if we have a twist, then we’re kind of out of luck.

There are ways to fix twists, and we have a video on that, but it’s better to just not have one.

So those are some ways to prevent a twist when you’re casting on to knit in the round.

Transcript

I’m going to talk to you now about how to knit a circular gauge swatch for
your circular knitting project. So when you knit a gauge swatch flat, you
knit the front and then you knit the back in the pattern that you want to
take your gauge measurement in. So for the most part, that is a stockinet
gauge swatch, which flat knitting would mean you would knit the front and
then purl the back.

But because in circular knitting, to get stockinet you
just knit around and around on the front, there is never any purls. And
because it takes a different tension and a different amount of yarn to make
a purl stitch, we would not want to make up a stockinet swatch with knits
and purls that we would measure for a project that we’re going to be making
in stockinet in the round because there will be no purling. So there is a
way to make a circular gauge swatch where you don’t actually need to knit
it in the round and you can still have a single layer swatch that lays flat
by doing this neat trick.

So I am swatching for a sweater with this
beautiful, brown yarn, and I am knitting across the front of the row just
like normal, and I cast on 32 stitches, which I knew would give me at least
four inches because it’s good to take your gauge measurement over four
inches and then divide by four so that you can get a nice… an average for
how many stitches you’re getting per inch. And if you’d like to see more
about measuring a gauge swatch, you can watch our video, “All About Gauge.”
So what happened here was I got to the end of the needle. I finished my
knitting. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull the left-hand
needle out all the way. I’m using a really long circular needle. And I’m
going to push it in on the other side, but you’ll notice that my yarn is
still waiting over here.

So what’s going to happen is I’m going to bring my empty right-hand needle
around and I’m going to bring this yarn in a really loose strand, hanging
in the back. Keep it nice and loose. You don’t want to make it tight or
taught because that will keep your gauge swatch from laying flat. Stick
your needle into the first stitch, and I’m sort of holding onto all this
nice looseness here in my float, and start knitting from the right side
again. So every time you end a row and come back around to the other side,
you’re going to have a long, long float. So I’ll finish the round, or the
row really. This is more like a row. And I’ll show you one more time how
to make the float. And this way, we can measure how many stitches we’re
getting per inch in stockinet without any purls, so we get a truer
representation of what this yarn does with these needles. Now of course,
if you’re getting too many stitches per inch or your fabric is too dense,
go up a needle size, and if it’s too gauzy and loose or you’re getting not
enough stitches per inch, go down a needle size. So here I come to the end
of my row, three, two, one, and this last stitch on the outside is going to
be nice and loose. That is okay. We’re not going to measure it. It’s
loose-really, really loose-because of all these floats back here. Pull the
left-hand needle out. Push it back in on the other side. Bring the needle
around. I always anchor it by sticking it in and holding it with my left
hand.

I bring the yarn around in a nice, loose float. And I start
knitting again. So what happens after you finish this circular gauge
swatch is that you would take your gauge, just like any other project, and
you would wash and dry your swatch the way you intend to wash and dry the
fabric itself, and you would use a knit check to lay it down here and to
count how many stitches per inch you’re getting. This little window lets
me count over two inches, but it also has this nice ruler on the bottom
where I can count between one and four inches. And that’s how you knit a
circular gauge swatch.

Transcript

I’m going to show you know how to fix stitches that are too tight. This tip is good for circular knitting as well as knitting on straight needles, but it’s especially important to not have tight stitches in circular knitting, because of this part of the needle here, this is called the ” Join,” and this is where the cable joins onto the needle, and there’s a huge change in size here between the diameter of the cable and the diameter of the needle. And thinking about the diameter of the needle is what’s going to help us loosen our stitches up.

Now if you’ve already knit a bunch of stitches that are too tight, there’s no way to fix stitches that are already made, but I will give you tips on how to loosen up future stitches, but you should never have to be fighting your stitches over the join. We can really hurt our hands if we’re really gripping tight for stitch after stitch, project after project, year after year. You’re going to save yourself some kind of tendinitis so, it’s nice to remember you’re making fabric. It needs to have some give, and some drape, and so you don’t want your stitches to grip the needle.

A lot of beginning knitters think their stitches need to be really tight, or else they’re going to fall off the needle, and the better you get at knitting the more relaxed you’ll be, and know they are going to stay there, especially if you’re knitting with bamboo which naturally grips the stitches.

So when I make a stitch, I go in from the left side, wrap around the back, scoop up a new loop, and pop off the old stitch. I’m a right handed knitter, so I throw my yarn with my right hand, but if you’re continental you’ll go into the left hand side, pick the yarn off your finger, scoop up that new loop, and throw it off the back.

So that third step, the scooping up the new loop, whether you do it with your left hand, or your right hand is the key to making good stitch tension. Stitches that are nice and loose. Not so loose that you can see daylight. You don’t want a stitch that looks like that, you do want your stitch to touch the needle on all sides, but not squeeze the needle. We don’t want strangling stitches.

So the way that I do this is I go in, I wrap around, and when I pull up a new stitch I make sure that my needle is actually pulling towards my body just a little bit, so that I can pop the old stitch off with ease. Then I give just a teeny tiny tug with my right hand, so little that I barely even notice that I’m doing it, scoop it up, just enough tug to lift the yarn back into position, and this just takes lots of practice.

Your tension is going to be kind of uneven when you’re a new knitter. In the first year of knitting, you may go from being too loose, to too tight, to being both in the same round, but just keep at it, it will get better.

If you hold it with your left hand, take the tip of the right hand needle into the stitch from the left side, scoop up a new loop, and again pull towards you just a little bit, so when you pop the old stitch off it’s got a good slide.

So you really want that join to slide in and out. The number one mistake that people make when they make their stitches too tight is knitting up here on the tip of the needle instead of down here on the shaft of the needle, and this shaft is the size of the needle. You’re buying a size whatever your needle is for this size here, not the tip.

So when you make your stitch, if you’re making loops up here on the tip of the needle? All your stitches are going to be too tight, so resist the urge to knit all the way up here. You really want to get them down there onto what’s called the ” shaft” of the needle . So when I stick my needle in, I stick it all the way to the thick part, then wrap my loop, and when I pull it out I again pull it down here to the shaft of the needle.

So with the left hand, stick it all the way in past the tip, scoop a new loop, and then the loop is being formed on the big part of the needle.

Those are some tips on how to keep your knitting nice, and loose, so that it can slide over the join in circular knitting.

Transcript

Let’s say you did your best to cast on and join to knit in the round without getting a twist, but you knit the first couple of rounds and you discover there is a twist. It happens to the best of us, not to worry. You can fix it without needing to go back if you catch it in the first round or two but once you’ve got a long length of material, there’s nothing for you to do, but take your needles out frog the project, cast on gain, and this time check maybe three times before you join to knit in the round.

If you catch it early like I have here, I can show you a quick cheat that won’t make it completely invisible, but it’s good enough if you don’t want to have to rip back.

So, as you can see here there is a little twist in my cast on edge, and I don’t want to knit any further, because the taller it gets the more obvious that twist is going to be, and I’ll actually be knitting something like a Mobius strip, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to follow the twist from the right side around.

This is really easy on a tiny project like this, but if it happens to you on a big circular knitting project like a sweater you do the same thing.

So, from the right side with your fingers you get everything aligned so your cast on edge is on the inside of the circle, push the twist as you go, then as you get up to the left needle you’re going to duck the left needle into the inside of the work, and back up in here which traps the twist against the cast on edge, and if you knit past that little caught twist there you really won’t be able to see much more than an indentation on your cast on edge.

It feels a little different. It feels harder where the other ones feel soft, but that is such a nice alternative. That’s a small price to pay for not needing to rip out.

So I will show you again. Let’s go back. There’s my twist right there. I’ll just go in reverse of what we did. So you’re knitting around, you’re knitting, you’re knitting, you look down, you think ” Oh no, I thought I double checked, but there is indeed a twist.” So, from the right side follow the twist along. Tuck my tail here. Push it around. When you get it all the way up to the left hand needle take your left hand needle, and sort of draw a circle in the air, point to the inside of your work, come back up, and now you’ve trapped the twist in between the last stitch, and the next stitch, and once you knit it and move on it will be fairly invisible. Especially if you’ve got skinny yarn. It’s fairly invisible on this big fat yarn. There it is, see the little twist? Just in there. And that is how you fix a twist in circular knitting.

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I’ll show you now how to count rows on your circular knitting project.

If you’re just knitting for a long length, like if you’re doing a sleeve and you don’t need to keep track of row number this, row number that, you can just knit and measure with your measuring tape when you think you are getting close. But if you’re doing a pattern that, for example, has you changing colors every round or has you doing some lace or cabling, you’ll need to know how to count.

So I’m going to show you how to count down in a column. I’ve got something to help my eyes, something with a tip that I’m going to point at the stitches with and I’m going to start down here at the bottom. This is a stitch, I’ve got both legs of the stitch. So I’m going to grab it. This is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and I just made 19. So I’m on round 20 because 19 of them are done. You’ll notice that I did not count my cast on.

Most patterns don’t count the cast on in the number of rounds but you might have a pattern that does. I’m not knitting from a pattern now, I just want to knit for a set number of inches. So the number of rounds isn’t really important to me unless I was going to try to ride up this pattern until [??] exactly what I did.

You may get a different row gauge than the pattern than the pattern writer if you’re using a pattern. So you may want to measure your own and just see. If they say to knit 40 rounds, you might have knit 43 rounds and you might be much farther past where they were or not quite there yet.

So counting rounds is as simple as counting down with a pointy object unless you can see it with your eyes and not get confused every stitch and if you get lost on where a stitch is, you can just grab both legs of the stitch like that and that will help you see that.

So that’s how to count rounds in circular knitting.

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So now I’ll show you how to keep track of your beginning of your round when you’re knitting circularly.

It’s pretty easy to keep track of the beginning of your row when you’re knitting flat because you’re back at the beginning of your row of stitches again and at you’re at the end of your needle or the beginning of your needle.

But when you’re knitting circularly, it all kind of spirals together.

So one method that I like to use is just to keep an eye on where my tail is. This is where I join to knit in the round.

And I can sort of trace, let me use my crochet hook to show you here, I’m going to trace up this column. And here we are. It’s the next stitch. So I know that I’m at the end of my round and this stitch is the beginning of my next round because that’s where my tail is.

This method is really great for when you don’t have to keep track of the round very closely. You’re not doing any patterns or any counting at all. It’s great for just mindless stockinette.

If you have a circular knitting pattern that you’re working up that is not mindless, you can use a marker and put it right between the last row of the round and the first row of the round so that as you are knitting around to is, just move on, so you’re going to knit around and around and around, and when you get here, your hands will signal you. You’ll say “oh, time to look down and pay attention.” This marker is the end of the round marker.

So those are two ways to help keep track of the end of the round.

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So now I’m going to show you how to increase when you’re knitting in the round.

There’s really nothing different about increasing in the round as opposed to when you’re increasing flat. You just have to figure out what kind of increases you want and where you want to put them.

So if this little sample that I’m making here, if I want it to increase evenly all over and just gradually increase its diameter, I would space my increases out evenly depending on how many stitches I wanted to increase each round.

I’m going to show you a couple of my favorite kinds of increases. But the other way of doing increases instead of spaced evenly is to stack them and every round or every other round put an increase in the same place.

So one type of increase is the make one increase.

Here’s my last stitch that I worked and here’s my next stitch. If you pull them apart, you can see that there’s a little bar here. I’m going to lift the bar and put it on my left hand needle, and then I’m going to knit it through the back loop, and that makes an M1 increase.

There are videos that go more in depth of every increase I’m going to show you here. You can just look them up on our series and get more of a do-over on the M1 increase.

So now I’m going to show you my favorite increase which is a knit one front and back.

So I’m going to go into the front of the stitch. I’m going to pull up a new loop but I’m not going to drop the old stitch off. What I’m going to do is instead I’m going to wheel around here and stick the right hand needle back into the back of the stitch and pull another loop. Therefore I’ve pulled two loops out of one, and that is a knit one front and back.

You can see the characteristic of this is that it makes what looks like a knit “v” and then a pearl bump.

So I’ll show you that once more. Knit into the front, wheel around, knit into the back, then pop the old one off. I’ll move one over.

And the last type of increase I’m going to show you is the yarn over increase where you bring the yarn to the front and then back over the needle and then knit the next stitch.

So again, all three of those types of increases have their own videos that you can watch me explain it to you more in depth.

And I’m just going to show you what they look like in a few things here.

If you look at the thumb gusset on this mitten, this is my Arrowmont mitten, the pattern’s for sale on my website, I use knit one front and back to increase here on the thumb gusset. So you can see knit one front and back creates that little pearl bump every time. So there’s the bump, there’s the bump, there’s the bump, there’s the bump, moving up every other round.

Then the M1 increase, which doesn’t make a bump. Let’s look at this thumb gusset. I’ve got just a row of knits that increase, that sort of grow out of here but without any of the bumps, they’re all M1 increases.

And then for a great example of yarn over increases in the feather and fan portion of my Katrina sock, which is a really easy toe up sock pattern available on my website, you can see all those beautiful little lacey holes, those are all yarn over increases. Because a yarn over, makes a hole which looks great when they’re on purpose, and not so great when you do them by accident.

So those are three different ways of increasing…(tape ends)

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So, I’m going to show you how to work decreases on a circular needle. The thing to remember is that there is no edge. Right? Because if we’re knitting in the round, there’s no right edge or left edge to have to balance decreases on. But there are a few different ways of doing decreases, and this is all pattern-dependent and garment-dependent. So I’ll show you a few different ways of arranging your decreases.

This is a hat that I knit in the round on a 60-inch circular. So, I knit around and around with a knit two, pearl two ribbing, and then I knit a long section of straight stockinette. And when I got to the top, it was time to start decreasing evenly in my round. So, I took the number of stitches that I had around, divided it by whatever number seemed to fit evenly into there, and I just did a decrease every inch or do . . . or that looks like every half inch or so. And that made even decreases around the top. And that’s to bring together things in sort of concentric circles the size of your rounds.

You can also stack them and make them directional, like the top of this mitten. This has left-leaning decreases on one side that are stacked up every other round. And this has right-leaning decreases on this side that are stacked up every other round. And that makes a directional decrease that’s repeated on this side of the mitten, left-leaning decreases and right-leaning decreases. And you actually don’t work the decreases any differently than you would on straight needles, except, remember, that there’s no beginning or end of the sides of your project here. You just have a round that goes around and around.

So, I’ll show you my favorite ways of decreasing. This is my favorite right-leaning decrease. I’ll do a couple of them. This is knit two together, and that makes the stitches on the left eat the ones on the right, so it kind of leans to the right.

And then there’s a few different ways of working a leaf-leaning decrease. One is a slip, slip, knit. So I’m going to slip a stitch as if to knit; slip a stitch as if to pearl, and then I’m going to knit them through the back loop. This makes a left-leaning decrease where the stitch on the right is eating the stitch on the left; therefore, it leans to the left.

And then you can also just knit two together through the back loop, which does the same thing but gives you a slightly different look. Here you can see that the stitch that sits on top is crossed at the bottom, as opposed to slip, slip, knit, where it’s open at the bottom.

And if you’d like to see exactly how to do those decreases, they are in another video on right-leaning decreases and left-leaning decreases. But you don’t have to work them any differently when you’re in the round than you do when you’re knitting flat.

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Now I’ll show you how to knit in the round if you are a continental knitter or a left-handed knitter. Now this has nothing to do with your actual handedness. You can write with a pen or a pencil with your right hand and be a left-handed knitter or you can be a left-hander and hold the needle in your right hand. It really just is a matter of which hand is more comfortable holding the yarn.

I grew up as a right-handed knitter, but because I like to do a lot of color work, for strained and fair isle colored work you have to hold one color in each hand so I taught myself to be a continental knitter. When I’m knitting something in just one color I use my dominant hand which is my right. I’ll now show you how to knit in the round if you are a left-handed knitter or if you knit continental. Another work for this is picking because when you stick your needle into the stitch you pick the yarn off of your left index finger as opposed to throwing.

When you hold the yarn in your right hand you throw the yarn around the right hand needle. So there’s really nothing different that you need to know about knitting in the round versus knitting flat if you’re a left-handed knitter. You’ll still be doing everything the same. You’ll be working stitches from the left hand needle to the right hand needle one at a time doing whatever stitch your pattern calls for. So this is just a plain stocking up example in the round and you’ll notice I’m a lot slower of a knitter with my left hand, that’s a-okay.

I am just knitting stitches one at a time from the left hand needle to the right, holding the yarn in my left hand. I’ll just tell you how I like to tension the yarn whether I’m holding it in my right hand or my left, what I do is I stick my index finger under the yarn and I hold it with these two fingers. So index under, pinkie and ring finger tensions and then I use my thumb and my middle finger to hold the needles in place.

So whether I am throwing with my right hand or picking with my left hand my index finger is under the yarn and I’m trapping the yarn against the work with my other fingers. So that is how you can knit in the round if you’re a continental or a left-handed knitter.

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Now I’m going to show you how to join to knit in the round using the two circular needle method.

Just like before, I’ve cast all my stitches on to one circular needle. This is my most recent stitch that I’ve just made. This is stitch number one.

What I’m going to do is slide it down to the other end so that I’m working from my first stitch.

Take your other needle, and I put the empty needle in my right and the full needle in my left, and slip half the stitches as if to pearl. Just like a double pointed set-up.

Two, four, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Now I’ve got half the stitches, that looks about right. I’ve got half the stitches on one needle, half the stitches on the other. I’m going to slide them both down onto the cables.

And now it’s just like magic loop. We want to make sure that the last stitch, the most recent stitch, that one that has the ball coming from it, is in the back.

The one that is my first cast on stitch is in the front.

I’m going to push the needle in, and because I’m knitting with two circular needles, I want to use the same needle, the one that is connected, to knit.

So this is where I’m going to join to knit in the round. I stick the needle into stitch number one, and with the most recent stitch, I use the yarn to connect.

And that is how you join to knit in the round using two circular needles.

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Now I’m going to show you how to join knit in the round using the magic loop method.

Just like the other ones, you want to cast all your cast on stitches on to one side of the needle. This is going to be a magic loop, obviously. I’ve got my long 40 inch needle.

And then what I need to do is slide the stitches down. I think I’ve got 30 on this one as well. And I’m going to pull my magic loop out from somewhere in the center.

So I just eyeball this because it doesn’t matter right now. I’m going to find that little center point or what looks close enough to center. I’m going to move the stitches down on to either side of my beginning magic loop here. Pull the loop out. And now I’ve got half the stitches on the front and half the stitches on the back. Roughly.

So for this one, we need to think about the most recent stitch cast on, the one with the yarny ends coming from it, as being in the back. And stitch number one, the first on I cast on, as being on the front.

Make sure I don’t have a twist. We’re going to talk more about how to join without a twist in another video.

So I’ve got half my stitches in the back. Half my stitches on the front.

Make sure that the yarn ends are handing down from the back needle.

And just like knitting with magic loop, I want to push my front needle in, hold them together, bring my back needle out and around ready to knit. And here’s where we connect. I want to make sure I’m working from the ball and not the tail. Make sure the yarn is behind the needle. Stick it in to stitch number one. And with the yarn coming from the most recent stitch, I am now joined to knit in the round.

So that’s how we join to knit in the round from magic loop. I would finish this round, or this row. I would finish this needle and then do the back.

And that’s how you join to knit in the round using magic loop.

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So now I’m going to show you how to join to knit in the round. This is so easy and so fun, and it’s what takes you from knitting flat to knitting circularly.

So now I’m going to show you how to join the knit in the round on a short circular needle. So here we have the short circular needle. I’ve already cast on enough stitches to stretch comfortably from point to point. They’re not stretched out at all. They’re nice and loose. I’ve got plenty of leeway here.

And what I’m going to do is I’m going to put the last stitch that I cast on, here I’ll do one more. Cast on. My working yarn and my end yarn is coming from that last stitch.

I’m going to position the needles in my hand so that I’ve got that last stitch in my right hand. And my first stitch that I cast on, we’ll call that stitch number one. We’ll call this the most recent stitch. Stitch number one is in my left hand. Most recent stitch is in my right.

All you have to do to join to knit in the round is insert the right needle tip into stitch number one, and with the yarn that’s coming from the most recent stitch, make sure you’re not using the tail, you’re using the ball yarn, I go ahead and knit stitch number one and now I’m connected to knit in the round.

It really is that easy. This is the method that I use for everything and it’s never given me any problems.

Some people do this knit two together method where they would cast on one extra stitch than the number that they need, and then they do something like knit that stitch and then knit these two together through the back loop to make an extra strong join.

For me, that’s just a little bit of extra work that I don’t need to do.

And that’ makes an extra strong join. But try it without. I like to just do the simple version.

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So, with double-pointed needles, it’s a little less straightforward. You’re going to go ahead and cast on your key number of stitches onto one circular needle. So, for this, I’ve cast on 30, because that’s really, really easy to distribute on three needles. So, all 30 are here, and then this is the last stitch, the most recent stitch, that I’ve cast on, on this end. I’m going to be working off of the right side of the needle. This is stitch number one. This is my most recent stitch. So, starting from the right side of the needle, I’m going to take an empty needle, and I’m going to slip one-third of the stitches as if to pearl. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. So, now I’ve got 20 and 10. I’m going to let that one just hang loose. I’m going to pick up another empty needle, and I’m going to do the same thing. I’m going to start right there from stitch number 11. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten stitches.

Slip as if to pearl. And now, I’m where I was with my short circular needle. I’ve got all of my stitches cast on in a row, evenly distributed, and I’m ready to join to knit in the round. So, I have to position it exactly the same way I did before. I’ve got my most recent stitch with the yarny ends coming down in my right hand, and I’ve got stitch number one in my left hand. Now, because we’re going to be knitting with double-pointed needles, I want to not knit these stitches back onto this needle, which means I’ll have 10 over here and 20 over there. I want to pick up my empty needle, and I’m going to stick it into stitch number one, and then connect to join to knit in the round. Don’t worry if they’re kind of falling all over the place. They won’t in just a second. I’m going to connect to join to knit in the round by knitting the yarn that’s coming from the most recent stitch onto the empty needle.

And now I’m passing the stitches from the full needle on my left side to the empty needle on my right side. So I’m going to show you that one more time, because that can be a little tricky to understand. Just undoing it. So, right now I’ve only got three needles. Everything is nice and lined up ten, ten, and ten. This is stitch number one, the first stitch I cast on, and this is my most recent stitch. So, what I want to do is not join to knit in the round with the needle that’s holding the most recent stitches, but join to knit in the round with the new needle. I’m going to stick it in before I do anything else. I’m going to grab the yarn with the ball end, not the tail end, and connect by knitting the first stitch. So, I’ll go ahead and finish this needle and show you what it looks like when it’s all connected. Nine, ten. There we have it. You’re now knitting in the round on double-pointed needles.

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I’m going to explain to you how best to distribute your stitches when you’re working in the round on DPNs-double pointed needles. You don’t have to worry about that when you’re knitting on a short circular because all of those stitches are together on the same cable. When you’re using magic loop or two circular needles or double pointed needles though, you do have to figure out how many stitches are going to be on each needle cord for magic loop and two circs and each needle for double pointed needles.

So I’m going to show you what I like to do. I am knitting this example on 32 stitches, which is good to know because I’m knitting knit two, purl two ribbing, which is a stitch repeat of four stitches. Knit two, purl two- that’s four. So the number of stitches I have in total needs to be divisible by four. So I have 32 stitches, which will not distribute evenly on three needles. It’s totally okay to have one needle that has a few more or a few less stitches. Don’t worry about that. I wouldn’t put, for example, 20 of them over here and 12 over here. I’ve got ten, ten and 12. But what I want to talk about is how to best distribute the types of stitches that you have. If you can see here, my knit two, purl two ribbing starts with two purls. For most people, it’s difficult to start any needle with a purl, just because it’s hard to figure out where the yarn is coming from. For me, I have worked on this long enough that I don’t have a problem figuring that out. If I’m inserting my working needle into the stitch as if to purl, I know that my yarn has to be in the front.

But I’m going to show you how to redistribute purl stitches so they don’t start your needle off. It’s just a lot easier to start your needle off with a knit. So instead of going ahead and starting my new, empty needle with the purl stitches, which is difficult, I’m going to redistribute them by knitting them onto this back needle that I just finished. This is a kind of a little cheat to redistribute them. So instead of using the empty needle, I’m going to use the needle that I just finished. I’m just going to slip the finished purls onto this back needle so that this needle now starts with knits. There is another way to do it where you don’t have to work the stitches, so I’ll show you on this side.

That’s where I just redistributed by knitting… by working the stitches. This is where I just redistributed by purling the stitches. And this is how I’m going to redistribute without working the stitches. So if you’re working around, you’re working on this over here, and you notice you need to redistribute over here, here is what you can do. So I want to move these two purl stitches to the end of the proceeding needle so they’re not at the beginning of this needle. All I’m going to do is sort of scoot my proceeding needle down a little bit-the one on the right-and I’m going to slip, as if to purl, which means you’re entering the stitch from the right, going from back to the front.

You’re not slipping as if to knit. You’re slipping as if to purl. And there I have moved them over correctly without having to work them. So now we’re going to count our stitches and get them a little more evenly distributed. I’m just going to check to make sure all three of my needles start with knits. This one starts with two knits. This one starts with two knits. And this one starts with two knits. But my stitch count is off. Over here I’ve got two, four, six, eight, ten, 12 stitches. Over here I’ve got two, four, six, eight, ten, 12 stitches. And on this little guy, I’ve got two, four, six, eight.

So I feel like things could be a little more evenly distributed. If you end up working like this, it’s really no problem at all. Like I was saying, unless you’ve got a high number on one needle and small numbers on the other, you’re not really going to run into any pulling problems. But just to show you again how to redistribute the stitches, I’ve got 12 over here, 12 over here and eight on this little guy, so I am going to need to move some stitches over. How about let’s slip these two purls back over here? Now I’ve got ten stitches here and ten stitches here and the only thing is this needle now starts with two purls. So I’ve shown you how to redistribute stitches by knitting or purling them and I’ve shown you how to redistribute them by simply slipping them over. The only thing you have to remember about slipping is that you always slip as if to purl and that means the stitch is moved and it’s still mounted correctly.

Try starting your needles with purl stitches and try starting your needles with knitting stiches. You may be surprised at how easy it is to start with a purl and if you’re doing something in stockinette on double points, you won’t have to worry about purls at all. So those are two ways of redistributing stiches on double pointed needles.

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So I’m going to tell you how to avoid a jog when changing colors in circular knitting. I’ll just show you what a jog looks like and explain to you why we get them.

So if you look up close here right this row this is the end of the round in my headband pattern, and you can see that this row of black and red stitches is just a little higher than this row of black and red stitches. And that is because when we knit in the round we are actually going one round higher every time we come back around to our marker point.

So this is the same headband being knit again, and this is the end of my round with a little marker here. Here’s the beginning of my round, and I’ll just sort of show you right now they are exactly the same height. Both needles are holding two rounds of color work, but as soon as I move my marker and begin the next round this row that’s round is now one step higher than the round before.

So I’ve just added on another stitch. So if I take them off the needle and line them up next to each other you can see that this guy is higher than this guy, and that’s because there’s three stitches stacked on each other as opposed to two after my ribbing. So that makes a jog in the rounds, and you can see it when you look here. You can see that that’s a little bit higher, and this red stitch is a little bit higher.

In my opinion that’s really no big deal. You don’t really notice it that much, especially once everything is blocked and pulled nicely. That is just sort of the nature of knitting in the round, but if you want to avoid a jog you could do a couple of little tricks. I’m going to take me back one stitch here. Alright.

So the last stitch of this round needs to be a little bit higher and a little bit looser in order to compensate for the next round. So this last red stitch, I’m going to make just a little bit looser. I’ll pull on it just a tiny bit, and I’m going to knit this first stitch just a little bit tighter. I’m going to give it a little tug.

Now you don’t want your loose stitch to be so loose that you can see daylight through it, or it will be obvious on the surface of your fabric. One loop will be sort of pulled out too big, like this one. You don’t want that. And your stitch that you pulled really tight you don’t want it to be cinched in on the back so I’ll pull one of my red stitches in towards the back so you can see what that would look like. There, this one is pulled really, really tight, and it’s kind of disappearing in the fabric. You don’t want that either.

We’re just going to decrease the height of this guy and increase the height of this guy. This is something that I never worry about personally. When I block my knits, when I give them a nice soak, when I wring them in a towel, and press them dry all of the jogs kind of disappear into each other. Here it is, you can tell this blue stitch is a little bit lower than this blue stitch, and this orange stitch is a little bit lower than its brothers over here, but that is fine with me.

I don’t think anyone is going to point it out on the street and make you worry about it. So if you want to avoid a jog in color knitting you can adjust the tension on either side of the marker, but it’s all going to come out in the wash anyway.

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When we are knitting circularly, we are actually knitting kind of like a helix. We’re spiraling up and up and up.

So if you think about a sheet of paper. If you are knitting flat, you would be working up in rows like lined notebook paper. You would do one line and then the next line and then the next line and they stack, kind of like bricks.

But when you’re circular knitting, you kind of think about bending that notebook paper around in a circle, and then jogging it just a little bit so that the lines continue all the way up instead of being offset.

It’s easier to think about in terms of yarn, at least for me.

When I’m knitting with color changing yarn, this is yarn that I dyed, and this is my Katrina sock which is a pattern that I wrote and is available on sale at my website, it’s really easy to see that helix because my yarn is fading from one color to the next as you go around, there’s no clear stopping point.

But what if you’re using two different colored yarns?

I’m going to show you how to avoid an obvious jag when you get to the end of the round.

So I’ve got a finished example of this headband, another pattern that I have for sale.

If you look here at the beginning of the round, it’s not really obvious where one round ends and the other one begins so I don’t have a really clear jog.

Part of that is helped by the pattern, and part of that is helped by the tips that I’m going to show you now.

So I’ve just finished, this is the same headband, just finished the first round which is alternating red then black, red then black, red then black, all the way around so that I end with a red then a black.

And now it’s time to go on to my second round which is going to be black then red, so that it alternates so that it makes a little checkerboard, just like here on the pattern.

So I’m going to knit with my black on top of my red, and I’ve started my second round of pattern. Therefore, this stitch is a little bit higher than this stitch.

What I want to think of is that right now it looks uneven. It looks like if I take them off the needles, you can see that this guy is actually one stitch taller than the row before. So there’s my helix jump where I’m sort of angling up on to the next round.

It’s a-okay that he is one stitch higher because I’m going to be building the entire row one stitch higher and when I get back around then this guy will be the same height that he is now and I’ll be adding on to the next one.

So it looks like you have a jog, but you don’t actually. And once your knitting project is knitted up and it’s blocked like this mitten, this is my Arrowmont mitten, you won’t be able to see any jog at all anywhere on the color changing because our eyes read it as sort of one long circle.

But if you want to look at it really up close, this is the color change here. And you can see that yes, this blue is a little bit lower than this brown because this is where I changed colors at the end of every round.

I would encourage you to really not worry about it too much. I don’t think that anyone is going to stop you on the street and examine your knitting and try to find the beginning of your round.

But if those jogs really bother you, one thing you can do is to give a tug on the stitch at the beginning and the end of the round and sort of pull them into place.

And when you block it, when your knitting is nice and wet and pliable, find that spot, you can block that jog out by kind of pulling the higher point down and pulling the lower point up and it will dry that way so that it’s nice and even.

Transcript

So this is a really, really cool tool, a great trick to know, for people who like to knit in the round. There are so many benefits to knitting garments in the round. Like if you are knitting a sweater, you can do it all in one piece. You don’t have to do a front and a back and then block them and seam them together. You can just knit the whole thing all in one.

But one thing that seamed garments do have over circular projects is that they have… The seam offers a lot to the garment. One of the things that a seam offers is looks, right? It looks nice and tidy. This is a false seam that I’m going to be showing you how to do. Another thing is stability. If you have a garment that is entirely knit circularly, there is a lot of places where it can stretch and sag and if you have a seam, that at least… that part is going to be held to the measurements that you knit it to, so it adds stability. And the last thing that false seams or real seams are good for is ease in blocking, so when I wash and dry my little sweater here, if I don’t have a seam on the side, it’s hard to know where the halfway point is. It’s hard to get a good fold. But on the side where I did do a false seam here, or if I had knit it flat where I sewed it up, that creates this perfect bend-point and it’s just nice and flat. So because it’s way easier to knit garments in the round, I’m going to show you how to create a false seam so that you can continue to blithely carry on knitting in the round and still have the benefits of doing seams.

So I’ve got a false seam here. I’m going to see if you can tell the difference. If we’re looking at columns of knits going down, you’ll see that this column here-I’ll just catch it with my crochet hook-this column here kind of stands out a little bit. It’s a little bit thicker, for reasons that I’m going to show you, and it also makes the fabric want to bend in around it. So it’s pretty subtle. It’s not like it’s going to pop out.

But that column there is my false seam. So let’s knit a few columns away and I’ll show you how to make one. So this is where you get to be really brave and do things that feels like destroying your knitting, but it’s actually a great way to take control of what’s happening as you create fabric that is just loops coming up through loops.

So I’m going to create a false seam in this next column coming up here and in order to do it, I’m going to need to drop my stitch, which is usually an accidental thing to do, and I’m going to be pulling these pieces of yarn out here, which we’ll call “the ladder.”

This is just like getting a run in stockings, right? Because stockings are knit. And when you get a run, you get to see all the little ladders, which make up the stitch column. So there is my little loop and all he is in its stitch is just a loop coming out of a loop, so there is the next loop. I’m going to stop there just to show you how we’re going to do it, but if you are doing a false seam on a sweater, you could knit the entire body of the sweater and drop all the way down, if you’re doing it on the sleeve. This is going to be a hat, so if I were you, I would finish the entire length of the piece and then drop all the way down.

For the ease of this video, I will show you how to do this. So what I want to do is I want to come in here with my crochet hook and capture the live stitch and then I’m going to capture two ladders at the same time. And what I want to do is pull both ladders through the stitch. So that’s a double pull and then I’m going to do a single pull, so I’m just going to catch one ladder and bring it through the two loops that were there. So I’ll show you a double one again. My crochet hook is still in the stitch, but I’ll just show you again how to put it in there. Put it in from front to back because we’re knitting. If you wanted to catch this in purl, you totally could. You could do a false seam made out of purls. You would put the ladder in front of the loop-just like when you knit you put the yarn in front of the purl-and you would insert your crochet hook from the back to the front. And then you would be able to pull this loop up, catch it, and it would look like a purl. So you could create a false seam out of purls, which would be way more obvious looking than our false seam made out of knit stitches. So that was a single.

Now I’m going to pull another double. I’ve caught two loops. I’m going to pull them. I’m using my finger to aid me here. If you get really good at this, you don’t have to. Now I’ve got two loops on here but I’m going to treat them as one. Catch one ladder; pull it through. Catch two ladders; pull them through. And I am not using my finger to help. Catch one ladder; pull it through. Catch two ladders, and pull them through. Now I’ve got two here where it needs to be one and I’m at the top of my little sample, so I’m just going to knit those together to turn them back into one, but you can see where I started my false seam and where I didn’t drop down to.

So you see this column is what we’re looking at. Follow this stitch all the way down. This one is a little chubbier. It stands out a little bit more. And that’s because the stitches are double thick in some places and they’re also stretched twice as high. Down here, from my crochet hook below, I didn’t do any. So if we follow this column down, I didn’t drop all the way down here, so that’s what it looks like normally and that’s what it looks like in the false seam, and it wants to create a nice bend there, just like this one does. That is how to create a false seam in circular knitting.