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!

I guess I must have had this pattern on my mind, because I had chosen this log cabin blanket recipe to write about, promptly forgot about it and a couple of weeks later started knitting a log cabin blanket using all my pink yarn.

It might stay pink if it makes it to baby blanket sized, or I might add in some pastel green and blue, too, to make a bigger blanket. We’ll see. I’m also holding several strands of yarn together to make a kind of bulky yarn, which means it’s deeply satisfying how much yarn is used even as the project is still relatively small.

In Kristen Finlay’s version, DK weight yarn scraps (or fingering/sock yarn held double) are used to make a simple scrappy log cabin blanket that’s lighter weight than my version. Log cabin is a great technique for knitters of any skill level because it’s worked in garter stitch. The only not completely basic technique you need for log cabin knitting is picking up stitches.

If you’ve never worked a log cabin knitting project before, this is a good introduction, and it is really nice to use all your yarn scraps in one big project you’ll use for years to come.

If you use a lot of DK weight yarn you can keep building on it whenever you finish a project, or if you use more worsted weight you can do the same thing with it, it will just be a little bigger starting out than the pattern calls for. How big it gets is totally up to you.

I have really been enjoying working on my log cabin project, and it’s my current sitting at my desk and need a break knit (do you have one of those or is it just me?).

Ready to start your own log cabin blanket knitting project? You can grab the free pattern from Kristen Finlay on Ravelry.

Need more log cabin inspiration? Check out more log cabin knitting patterns.

[Photo: Kristen Finlay]

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