Shapes: circle

I am starting a new series of posts dedicated to shapes. Each post will exemplify a single method to obtain a specific shape. This means that several posts will be dedicated to the same shape since there is always more than one method to obtain a specific shape.

Today we discuss one of the many methods available to knit a circle. As it turns out I already wrote a few posts on this: using the swirl method, the same method we will discuss today and a circle with a hole in the centre. But those posts were written quite a while ago and, even though I am repeating myself, I'd rather do it for the sake completeness.

Before I start, let me remind you there is not one perfect method, each method has its advantages and drawbacks, but knowing them all will allow you to choose the right one for your project. Hence, I will try to briefly discuss the uses as well as advantages and disadvantages of each method.

The concentric method

This method is named after the concentric circles created by the increase rounds. This is a method to knit a circle in the round and from the centre out.

Here is the simple recipe:

1. Cast-on 4 stitches and spread them over 2 or more needles, according to whatever method you prefer to join in the round.
2. Round 1: knit all stitches, if you haven't done so already in the previous step.
3. Round 2: kfb all stitches [8 sts].
4. Rounds 3: knit all stitches.
5. Round 4: kfb all stitches [16 sts].
6. Rounds 5-7: knit all stitches.
7. Round 8: kfb all stitches [32 sts].
8. Rounds 9-15: knit all stitches.
9. Round 16: kfb all stitches [64 sts].
10. Rounds 17-31: knit all stitches.
11. Round 32: kfb all stitches [128 sts].
12. Rounds 33-63: knit all stitches.
13. Round 64: kfb all stitches [256 sts].
14. Continue by knitting all rounds straight, except rounds that are a power or two, where you double the stitches.
15. If knitting plain stockinette (or another curling stitch), end with about six rounds of garter stitch (or another non-curling stitch), before binding-off with your favourite elastic bind-off.
16. Weave in ends and block it.

Abbreviations: kfb: knit front and back. Feel free to replace this single increase by any other method. For example, a knit 1 followed by a yarn-over will create nice decorative concentric eyelet circles.

Variations:

The above method works quite well for plain stockinette stitch, but, when using a different stitch pattern, you may have to adapt it and work at different increase rounds. Knitting is always very forgiving and as long as you don't stray too far from perfect, you are always going to get pretty good results. For comparison and to give you an idea of how this recipe can be changed, here is the original Pi-shawl recipe from Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitter's Almanac. Cast-on 9 st, then knit all rounds straight except the following increasing rounds: 2, 6, 13, 26, 51, 100, etc. The math behind this sequence is that the number of plain rounds in between increase rounds starts with 3 and doubles every time.

Uses

Circles appear very often in knitting, the most common uses are: the top of a hat, the circular yoke of a sweater, round shawls, doilies, etc. This method in particular is often used together with lace as in the Pi-shawl pattern, because it allows for increasingly large areas with no shaping at all and, therefore, no disturbances on the lace pattern. The same way it can be useful for colour work or knit-purl combinations, in fact, it is useful whenever using a stitch pattern with a specific number of stitches. The obvious limitation of this method for such use is that the number of stitches in the stitch pattern must be an equal or smaller power of two (than the one currently on the needles) in order for it to be a divisor of the current number of stitches. Sorry if this might be a bit confusing or even esoteric for those of you that are a bit math challenged, but I'm going for brevity. However, you should not discard this method even when knitting in plain stockinette. I like to use it for the top of hats, for example.

Disadvantages:

The obvious and greatest disadvantage of this method is that we are always working with a very specific number of stitches, namely powers of two: 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, etc. This may make this method useless for many of its natural uses, like knitting hats and circular yoke sweaters, unless you are so lucky that you get a good fit for your size using a number of stitches that happens to be a power of two (it has happened to me). There are simple ways of fixing this problem and I plan on writing a post about this in the future.

Advantages:

• It's the easiest way to obtain a perfectly round circle.
• It's pretty easy to execute, since it does not require any stitch counting, but it does require keeping track of the number of rounds. It's however a very forgiving method: you will still get a nice circle shape as long as you do not mess up your row count too badly.
• Even though it creates very visible concentric circles (however, if using different stitch patterns, these circles may be hidden in the changes), it is more discrete than the swirl method, for example.