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There are some patterns out there that are knit in the round that have you start at the
center of the piece, and have you increase and increase until you end up with a bigger
piece.
I have a blanket out, called the Eyelet Baby Blanket that starts this way. There is also
a very popular pattern on knitty.com called the French Market Bag. I love that bag.
But the very hardest part of both of those patterns is getting started with the tiny
little bit of knitting that you have at the center of the piece.
Um, I’m going to demonstrate how to work with four needles when you only have eight
stitches cast on.
Let’s just look at it here.
Here’s the mess of what I have so far, and I only have three needles.
I’m going to need to cast on two more stitches on to one more needle, to really make a mess
out of this.
It’s funny – both of the patterns that I mentioned are so fun to knit, but they’re
only fun after you get a few rows going.
Because starting with this does not look like any fun.
But you can get through it! We’re going to do it together! [laughs]
First thing you want to do is straighten things out. And it’s going to sound like wind chimes
for a moment here.
Find my working yarn, get it untangled, and…
Here we are. This is taking me a moment to get straightened out.
There is my working yarn and my first needle, my second needle, my third needle, my fourth
needle.
So my cast on runs like this.
It might take you a minute to get here, but you need to start here so you understand where
your working yarn is, and where your last stitch is, I mean the first stitch that you
cast on.
Because when I use this working yarn to knit this stitch, it’s going to close it up in
the round, and start the little center of my work.
When we get this started you need to count the stitches.
Normally, when we’re knitting in the round, we can use a stitch marker or something to
mark the beginning of the round.
But with this, there’s no place to clip a stitch marker yet. There’s no work.
And it ends up being hard to figure out.
So the first round I’m going to knit, I’m going to count the stitches so I know when
I get to the end of the round.
So here’s my working yarn, here’s my first stitch.
I’m leaving everything on the table for a minute so it doesn’t get twisted. I don’t
need to try to hang on to all four needles.
I’m just going to hang on to this empty needle in my right hand, and get my first
stitch set up, still not picking it up off the table.
Get my needle in there. Wrap the needle, and now that I’m ready to pull this through,
I can actually pick it up off the table. It won’t get twisted anymore.
So the first round I’m going to knit.
I think most patterns do have you just knitting the first round.
So there’s my last stitch. Just to the left of my last stitch is my next stitch, on the
next needle.
So I knit two, this is three and four.
My next needle is here.
This is five and six.
And this is
seven and eight.
Okay, I have knit around all eight stitches.
Still doesn’t look much better than it did on the first round.
This is not a good time to answer the phone or anything! Stick with your work these first
few rounds.
Don’t set it down and try to come back to it at this point.
So I’m back at the first stitch of the round.
In my Eyelet Baby Blanket pattern, we increase on this round.
It’s knit one, yarn over, knit one.
So I’m going to end up with three stitches on each needle when I’m done with this round,
so it will be easier to tell where the beginning of my round is at this time.
So I’m going to knit one, yarn over, knit one.
And that was the first needle which now has three stitches on it.
Knit one, yarn over, knit one.
I like the sound of these wood needles.
Okay, and this is my last one.
I do not want to knit with my tail in this case! [laughs] I’m being very careful to
separate my tail out.
Oh, my goodness. Knit one, yarn over, knit one.
These last few stitches are giving me trouble, but things are going to be a whole lot easier
from here on out.
Okay.
If I can get this straightened out, you’ll be able to see that we actually have a shape
started here.
There’s the – it’s actually looking like a square now. And there is enough fabric
there for me to use a clippie marker to mark the beginning of my round.
And as I knit more and more and increase more and more, I can move the marker up, close
to the edge of the work to mark the beginning of the round.
And that’s how you get started with a few stitches on double pointed needles. The most
difficult part of the whole knitting project when you start that way!
Good luck!
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