This Monday I casted on for another seed stitch cowl. I have 3 balls of Lion Brand Tweed Stripes in Seashell. For a 100% acrylic yarn, it’s delightfully soft and squishy. I bought it while it was on clearance/sale, and I’m quite pleased with how it’s turning out so far.

Not much of a pattern though – I cast on 55 stitches, and then it’s seed stitch every single row. I’m planning on knitting on it until I’m completely done all three balls, so it should be a decent length of a cowl that I can loop at least twice around my neck. These are being knit on 5.00mm/US 8 circulars – because I hardly ever use straights anymore.

These are my Jaywalker socks. Jaywalker is a free pattern by Grumperina and is available on Ravelry. The pattern is very easy to memorize, it comes in a few sizes and I’m definitely going to make another pair in the correct size for me.

I made them out of Knit Picks Felici in the Mixed Berries colourway (now discontinued – I wish I had bought more!). These are knit on size 2.25mm needles (US 1) using my Chiaogoo circulars – love them! I did them with magic loop and did the heel as written (heel flap & gusset). Unfortunately, they are just too small for me, so these are destined to be my mom’s Christmas gift this year.

So this is the Cream & Berries Birthday Cowl. I didn’t use a pattern for this one, made it up when I started it as I was trying to figure out what to do. This was made for my mom and I used Rowan Ribbon Twist (super bulky weight yarn) on 8mm circular knitting needles (80cm length). This is my first finished project on circulars!

What I liked about making this was that it was relatively quick (I started and finished it yesterday). But what I didn’t like about it was that I was actually trying to make it into a moebius (and therefore trying to twist the stitches at the very beginning), but I couldn’t get them to twist. Overall, it was a nice first project done on circulars. Not too difficult to do and I liked doing a 1×1 ribbing all throughout, it shows up quite nicely in the bulky yarn and the ribbon adds a nice accent to everything (especially since the ribbon is variegated throughout).

Modeled by Elijah

Knitting in the round (with both circular knitting needles and double pointed needles [DPNs]) is something that I’ve recently (sort of) mastered. I lamented about my inability to ‘get’ the whole circular knitting thing and a Twitter/Flickr friend (irulethegalaxy) helped me out by explaining the basics to me (and was a lot more patient than my sister ever was when explaining it to me!).

My first attempt at knitting in the round was done with double pointed needles. I found it difficult at the beginning because after spreading out my stitches onto three needles, I was left with 6 different pointed ends constantly poking into my fingers or the palms of my hands. But eventually, I did “get” it and ended up with a short, stubby little tube.

My tension was off, there were little visible ‘ladders’ so I could see exactly where the stitches changed from each needle, but it was okay, because I could knit with DPNs!

For my second attempt at knitting the round, I grabbed a pair of circular knitting needles (8mm) for this lovely ball of super bulky weight yarn. The one thing I love about chunky knits is that it works up relatively quickly because everything’s a lot bigger in width, height and overall thickness.

It’s a lot different with crocheting in joined rounds (joined rounds, unless you’ve got the world’s best tension, results in having a noticeable ‘seam’ where you joined the rounds) but it’s quite similar to crochet in the round (no seam, spirals up), which I’m most familiar with. I’m a lot more comfortable with freestyling my own designs in crochet, so unless there’s no shaping involved, chances are that I’ll be reaching for a crochet hook instead of knitting needles for making amigurumis, but I do love the fact that I know how to knit in the round for both DPNs and circulars!