Casting On in the Middle

I love knitting in the round - little tiny circles spiraling out into great big circles! Starting in the middle opens up a world of possibilities - pentagons, octagons, umpteen-a-gons, not to mention spheres and eggs and octopi and all manner of seamless toys. But how exactly do you get started?

Here are some great tutorials that other folks have done:

Emily Orcker's Circular Cast-On from Bagatell
(a crochet cast-on)

Fleegle's Blog - Simple Ring Beginning for Circular Shawls
(a really elegant ring made with one knitting needle)

And the line-art wizardry of TechKnitting(tm):
Casting on From the Middle - Disappearing Loop Method

And here's how I like to do it - you may notice it gives the same result as TechKnitting's method, but I go about it a little differently. You'll need two double-pointed needles and a tapestry needle.

1) Make a slip knot and secure it to one dpn, leaving a generous tail 6 or 7 inches long.


2) Hold a second dpn parallel to the first. Wrap the yarn under the bottom dpn, then over the top one, making a figure-eight.


3) Continue figure-eight-ing until the top needle has the desired number of stitches plus one extra.


4) Thread the tail through a tapestry needle. Holding the working yarn in place, carefully slip the bottom needle free from the stitches.



5) Drop the slip knot off the left side of the dpn and thread the tail through the empty loops from right to left using the tapestry needle.


6) Gently tug the slip knot to undo it.

7) Distribute the stitches over the desired number of dpns and begin working in the round. After you've worked five or six rounds, pull the tail snug. Reinforce it by threading it through the loops a couple times.

The result:

Hyperbolic Knitting (Fuzzy Math)

Inspired by the forms of the crochet coral reef but prefer sticks to hooks? Here are 2 experiments in hyperbolic knitting.

Both of these shapes are made using the same basic pattern. If you can knit in the round and work an increase, you can do this, too. Here's how to play along:

Pick a number of stitches to cast on.
Pick another number, which we'll call (X).

Using double-pointed needles, cast on to work in the round (start out as for i-cord and add more needles as you need them)

k(X), increase 1, k(X), increase 1 , k(X), increase 1...

That's it! Bind off when you feel like stopping or you run low on yarn or needle-space. Since this is an exponential form, each round will ruffle more than the last and use more and more yarn.

The smaller the number you choose for (X), the sooner and sharper your form will ruffle. The bigger (X) is, the skinnier your form will be.

In each of these models, I cast on 4 stitches. For the tall skinny one, (X) is 15. For the fat one, it's 5.

I used yarn-overs for the increases because I wanted the random-ish pattern that the increases make to be visible. Using kfb or a lifted increase will be less visible and will make the ruffling more pronounced.

Have fun with it!

Centered Double Decrease (sl 2, k1, p2sso) Tutorial

Here's a step-by-step of my best fave decrease. It pulls both sides towards a central raised stitch, which looks super neat-o. It's featured heavily in the squid pattern (this'll be in the stitch dictionary when I finally put it all together), but here it is for all. I knit "british," so that's the way the tuturial goes.

Step one: slip two stitches together as if to knit:
step 2: enter next stitch after the 2 you just slipped ...
... and knit it.
step 3: With the left-hand needle, pick up the two slipped stitches and pass them together over the stitch just knit.
The result: