Knitting Hack: How to End a Circular Knitting Project

There are lots of little tricks in knitting that you don’t necessarily learn when you’re learning how to knit, particularly if you learned from the Internet (not that there’s anything wrong with that; I’m proud to teach people to knit online!) or a book because you’re not really seeing how another person knits and they might not remember all the little things they didn’t know when they were new to knitting.

So it’s great when you can pick up some of those little tips along the way, like this one about how to finish off the knitting when you bind off a circular knit project. This comes from Susi at Just Crafty Enough, and this is how I do it, too.

Basically you just need to make a loop with the tail that looks like a bound off stitch, then weave in the end as normal and it will be difficult to tell where the end of the round was by looking at the bind off. It’s a great way to make your projects look a little more finished, and it doesn’t really take any extra time at all.

Do you do this? I’d love to hear any tricks you have for making circular knitting a little easier.

[Photo via Just Crafty Enough.]

Next Pattern:

This swirly square stitch knitting pattern from Studio Knit is a lot of fun, and it looks kind of complicated without being difficult at all.

The swirly nature of the block comes from regularly placed increases, as the pattern is worked in rounds from the center out. Switching between sections of all knit stitches and all purl stitches (which gives you stockinette and reverse stockinette respectively when worked in the round) adds to the off-kilter flair but makes it really easy to knit.

You can work it in a single color or change colors regularly. This isn’t really a change colors randomly kind of pattern just because it looks better if you work a full repeat in a single color, but you know there are no rules so you can do whatever you want.

You can also make it any size you like, and indeed use any yarn you want. This one is blanket sized and used five colors of worsted weight yarn, but you can use any yarn and corresponding needles (you’ll need double pointed needles and circulars of various lengths, depending on how big you want to make your square).

For a start, why not grab some cotton yarn and stitch up a swirly washcloth? You could still use a couple of colors if you want, jsut for fun.

Once you try that, you’ll probably want to make a bigger version, and you could definitely use more colors than Kristen did (or just one color if you prefer), you just need to make sure you change colors at the beginning of the pattern repeat to keep everything looking good.

If you’re ready to start (and I know I am!) you can grab the free pattern and check out a video to help you get started at Studio Knit.

[Photo: Studio Knit]

Next Pattern:

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