Practically Everything You Need to Know about Circular Knitting
If knitting in the round twists your circular cables or tangles up your DPNs, check out this mega-guide about circular knitting
“I’ve never attempted knitting in the round, I don’t think I could use dpns and I don’t know how to do magic loop with a circular needles.”
“I struggle with double-points, any all other ways of knitting in the round!”
“I need instructions on how to do circular knitting. I need basic child-level instruction. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I just don’t get it!!”
It seems that few aspects of knitting brings more frustration than circular knitting.
There appear to be two types of knitters who don’t knit in the round. There’s the type who don’t feel the need to knit in the round, and there’s the type that who have tried it and can’t seem to catch on.
I understand both points of view completely. In fact, I even remember once, about a year after that I firmly told my knitting mentor I had no desire to learn circular knitting, that I was completely fine with flat knitting forever.
Oops!
What changed? What usually changes whenever I decide I’m going to dive in and learn a new technique: I found a pattern that I loved that was to be knitted in the round.
That made me decide that perhaps, just this once, I could try circular knitting. After that, I figured I’d speedily return to my beloved flat knitting.
As it turned out, I never looked back!
Over the years, I learned so much about circular knitting that has improved my technique, though. Some I learned through trial and error; others I learned through blog posts and articles and videos online.
Here you’ll find a collection of posts regarding circular knitting. Some of these offer links for tutorials; others offer tips to help you improve your circular knitting.
Help for Circular Knitting
The Spruce Crafts Guides: These guides offer helpful tips for joining knitting in the round (which can be tricky) and double-pointed needles (aka DPNs) tips.
The following are tips and tutorials found right here at Knitting for Charity!
Part 1 in Learning to Knit with Double-Pointed Needles (DPNs): Tutorials
Part 2 in Learning to Knit with Double-Pointed Needles (DPNs): My Tips
Circular Knitting without DPNs — Use One or More Circular Needles
Learn about Knitting on Two Circular Needles with Tutorials
Learn about the Magical Art of Magic Loop Knitting
I hope this mega-guide has helped you with any questions you might have about circular knitting. If there’s something I haven’t addressed here, please let me know–I’ll help you find a solution!
What brand of yarn is in the image of this article?
Sorry, Mia, I don’t know what brand of yarn is shown here. I didn’t take these photos — they’re stock photos.
I am going to try this the next time I use double points –
‘In the past few years I’ve discovered an even better way to avoid ladders: knit (or purl, whichever is in your pattern) the first and last stitch on every needle through the back loop. This twists the stitch, which in turn draws the stitches around it more closely together.’
This works well on circular needles too, Linda. In fact I have a project on my needles right now and I’m doing just that! 🙂
There is one other way that I use circular needles, it’s called walking the loop. I had to figure this one out on my own when I didn’t have circular needles long enough for several projects. I’ve only seen one reference to it on Pinterest but I now use it all the time instead of the magic loop. It’s an absolute lifesaver !!!
Shari, I think I may have used this method before, quite by accident. 😂 Thanks for sharing!
Where is the link to click on for the guide?????????
Which guide did you mean?