Pin of the Week: An Awesome Reference for Circular Knitting

I don’t have the original source for this one, I’m sorry to say, but I first saw it on Cascade Yarns’ Facebook page a couple of days ago and someone who commented on the post had a link to a pin for it.

So I pinned it, and I think it’s awesome.

This little chart gives you an idea of how many stitches you need to be able to comfortably work with a circular needle of a particular circumference given your gauge. So, for instance, if you’re casting on 100 stitches for a sweater and you’re getting 5 stitches per inch (a totally made up example, by the way), you would want to use a 16-inch needle. Or to got the other way, if you were knitting a hat that started on a 16-inch needle and you had, say 3 stitches to the inch, once you got below 48 stitches you’d want to switch to DPNs.

Isn’t that cool? If anyone knows where this chart came from I’d love to give credit!

Next Pattern:

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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