Don’t be Afraid of Knitting in the Round

Yarn Academy recently did a three-part series on knitting in the round, covering common fears about knitting in the round, challenging those fears with facts and providing additional benefits of knitting in the round.

Circular knitting is great because it produces seamless fabric that can be shaped to fit body parts, whether those parts are feet or heads or fingers. Sweaters at least seem to get done a lot faster when you don’t have a ton of finishing to do, and the knitting seems to go faster because a lot of the time you may just be knitting (if you’re making Stockinette Stitch).

There are some downsides to circular knitting. Stripes and other colorwork have jogs instead of making perfect lines (there are ways to minimize this). It’s difficult to work intarsia in the round. A full sweater can get heavy while you’re knitting it all in one piece.

But still, I think it’s great to know how to knit circularly, whether with a circular needle, on double-pointed needles, using one long circular (or two circulars) or even a tiny circumference circular. There are so many different ways to try you’re sure to find one that you like.

Do you have a favorite method of circular knitting? I’d love to hear about it!

Generally I like knitting patterns where I feel like you can use whatever yarn you have (because my stash is big enough and I want to use it, thanks) and make a successful project. This is one of those times when a special yarn makes the process that much easier.

The Floral Bouquet Shawl from Xandy Peters uses a specific extended color pooling yarn from Feisty Fibers, which allows you to place the bobble flowers with increasing frequency as you knit the project.

It starts with a solid color yarn, then the two color yarn is added in, and you make a bobble whenever you encounter the color pops. This would be hard to replicate with other yarn that doesn’t have the extended color pooling built in.

The background of the shawl is ribbed, making the project reversible.

The shawl uses fingering/sock yarn and comes out to be an asymmetrical triangle that’s 54 inches/137 cm long and 36 inches/ 90 cm deep and 60 inches/150 cm across the top edge.

Xandy says the pattern is for intermediate to advanced knitters. Knowing how to work traditional bobbles would probably help, but there’s a great video tutorial for how to work the floral bobbles so you can practice on other yarn or even incorporate the bobbles into other projects.

The bobbles are five-petaled flowers but they also kind of look like starfish to me, which could be fun on a child’s cardigan or other pattern. They’d also be fun on the leg of a sock or around the brim of a hat for extra whimsy.

The pattern includes photo and video tutorials, and written and charted instructions. It also includes tips on what to look for if you choose to use different yarn for the project, and instructions on how to dye your own yarn to use in the project.

If you want to give it a try, you can find the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Xandy Peters]

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