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:

I’ve been enjoying knit amigurumi animal patterns lately (see also: this adorable knit pigeon) and of course being a knitter I love llamas.

So when I saw this little llama pattern I knew I had to share it.

The appropriately named Llama patter from Annie Ahn calls for fingering weight yarn, and it uses two colors for the body and three for the little blanket. The pompom can be made to match or in another color. All of these parts take tiny amounts of yarn so you can use whatever scraps you have left over from socks or other projects and change colors whenever you need to.

It might also be fun to use some mohair or other fuzzy or textured yarn on this one to give your llama a different look. In all the project uses between 100 and 150 yards, or 91-137 m, of yarn and the llama comes out about 10 cm/4 inches tall.

The body of the llama is worked in one piece, so this project is suited to intermediate knitters or those who have comfort working in the round and with all those little pieces.

This one is made to be small so you can carry it around with you (it would be super cute on a keychain or as a zipper pull) but I think it would be a lot of fun to knit this in larger yarn, too, to make a bigger llama. You could even make a whole family in different sizes just by using different weights of yarn and corresponding needles.

The details are so cute, from the shaggy hair to its little accessories, but you could make it plain or change it up by knitting a tiny scarf or even working a little fair isle pattern on the legs or body. So many fun possibilities!

The pattern is available on Ravelry in English and Korean.

[Photo: Annie Ahn]

Next Pattern:

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