Circle Poncho
I bet that after my last post some of you may be wondering, why would I want to knit circles? I'm going to be the first to admit that the reasons I mentioned in the post were kind of lame. Of course there are quite a lot of lovely patterns that involve circles. I'm thinking of those complex lace patterns in particular. Some of those are just amazing works of art. On the other hand, if you're following a pattern you don't need to know how to knit a circle...
I was thinking about this when the following idea came to me. If you put a hole in the middle of a large circle you get a poncho. Brilliant! Right? OK... kind of obvious.
So the question is, how to go about doing a circle with a hole in the middle? Well, it is kind of obvious. If you cast-on the number of stitches that corresponds to the size of the hole and then follow the circle procedure, you will obtain only the outer part of the circle. Elementary, my dear Watson. After figuring this stuff out, we're ready to go, right? Well, I'm afraid the trickiest part is still to come. You must decide how many stitches to cast-on and how many rounds to work. As is almost always the case when starting a new project, you should knit a gauge swatch first. However, you must exercise some caution in using the gauge you've obtained for the following reason: a poncho is a large, heavy piece that will tend to stretch quite a lot at the shoulders. It is impossible to predict how much, because that will depend not only on the size of the poncho (it will be nothing in baby sizes but some in large adult sizes), but also on the yarn you use, its weight and how stretchy it is. So what to do? First, plan a relatively cosy collar, so that the stretching won't make the poncho fall down the shoulders. Then knit a poncho that is slightly short 'at the cuffs'. The good news is that, because you're knitting top-down you can easily undo the bind-off at a later time and correct your measure by either frogging some rounds or adding them. But of course, you'd rather not to do it. Well, in a way you may never have to do it , because you can use a poncho that doesn't reach your wrists or one that goes well under your hands. That's the good thing about ponchos. Personally I'd rather be on the short side. Remember that those big ponchos that go down to the knees usually have some holes to stick your hands out when needed. A large poncho without the holes will be impractical.
The trick here is (if you remember method 1, see last paragraph in that post) you need to keep on increasing an average of 4 stitches every round, but you will want to space out those increases as evenly as possible in order to get a regular shape of a circle (this is really the non-trivial part).
Here is a little math to explain everything. As I mentioned in my first post on circles, all two dimensional shapes scale in a way that their perimeter is proportional to the number of rounds (if you are creating the shape in the round, which is the case here). In knitting, this translates to increasing a fixed number of stitches per round on average (you do not need to increase every round, but you need to keep the average fixed). If you look at the images of regular polygons bellow, it is easy to see that the more sides the polygon has the more its shape resembles the circle. When knitting, it is easy to create any of these shapes by aligning the increases along the lines that join the centre to the corners. The question is, how many stitches to increase? As I explained in the aforementioned post, too many or too little stitches and the knitted object will not remain flat, it will deform and become three dimensional. And knitters know by experience that the circle requires a 4-stitch increase. However, to obtain a circle and not one of the other shapes you must: (1) position your increases as evenly along the piece as possible (emulating a many-sided polygon) and (2) block it into the shape of the circle (because the elasticity of the knitted stitches is necessary to get a flat circle shape).
I was thinking about this when the following idea came to me. If you put a hole in the middle of a large circle you get a poncho. Brilliant! Right? OK... kind of obvious.
So the question is, how to go about doing a circle with a hole in the middle? Well, it is kind of obvious. If you cast-on the number of stitches that corresponds to the size of the hole and then follow the circle procedure, you will obtain only the outer part of the circle. Elementary, my dear Watson. After figuring this stuff out, we're ready to go, right? Well, I'm afraid the trickiest part is still to come. You must decide how many stitches to cast-on and how many rounds to work. As is almost always the case when starting a new project, you should knit a gauge swatch first. However, you must exercise some caution in using the gauge you've obtained for the following reason: a poncho is a large, heavy piece that will tend to stretch quite a lot at the shoulders. It is impossible to predict how much, because that will depend not only on the size of the poncho (it will be nothing in baby sizes but some in large adult sizes), but also on the yarn you use, its weight and how stretchy it is. So what to do? First, plan a relatively cosy collar, so that the stretching won't make the poncho fall down the shoulders. Then knit a poncho that is slightly short 'at the cuffs'. The good news is that, because you're knitting top-down you can easily undo the bind-off at a later time and correct your measure by either frogging some rounds or adding them. But of course, you'd rather not to do it. Well, in a way you may never have to do it , because you can use a poncho that doesn't reach your wrists or one that goes well under your hands. That's the good thing about ponchos. Personally I'd rather be on the short side. Remember that those big ponchos that go down to the knees usually have some holes to stick your hands out when needed. A large poncho without the holes will be impractical.
The trick here is (if you remember method 1, see last paragraph in that post) you need to keep on increasing an average of 4 stitches every round, but you will want to space out those increases as evenly as possible in order to get a regular shape of a circle (this is really the non-trivial part).
Here is a little math to explain everything. As I mentioned in my first post on circles, all two dimensional shapes scale in a way that their perimeter is proportional to the number of rounds (if you are creating the shape in the round, which is the case here). In knitting, this translates to increasing a fixed number of stitches per round on average (you do not need to increase every round, but you need to keep the average fixed). If you look at the images of regular polygons bellow, it is easy to see that the more sides the polygon has the more its shape resembles the circle. When knitting, it is easy to create any of these shapes by aligning the increases along the lines that join the centre to the corners. The question is, how many stitches to increase? As I explained in the aforementioned post, too many or too little stitches and the knitted object will not remain flat, it will deform and become three dimensional. And knitters know by experience that the circle requires a 4-stitch increase. However, to obtain a circle and not one of the other shapes you must: (1) position your increases as evenly along the piece as possible (emulating a many-sided polygon) and (2) block it into the shape of the circle (because the elasticity of the knitted stitches is necessary to get a flat circle shape).
Regular polygons (taken from wikipedia)
- Cast-on the number of stitches corresponding to the size of the collar.
- Knit several rounds of garter or any other stitch pattern that does not curl.
- Multiply the number of rounds you have just knitted by 4, say that number is n, and work a round of n evenly-spaced increases.
- Continue working in the pattern desired (you can change to stockinette or continue in garter stitch). After several rounds, do an increase round following the above recipe.
- Finish with several rounds of garter or any other stitch pattern that does not curl.
- add colour, simple stripes, complex fair-isle, you choose;
- add lace, you can easily find patterns with lace circles (or half-circle shawls) on ravelry and use them with the above recipe.
- if using a pattern with regular repetitions (this can be lace, fair-isle, or simple knit-purl combinations), space out the increase rows so that the total number of stitches is always a multiple of the number of stitches in each repetition.
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