Accidental Mobius?

#1

I have a knitting club at school and I have a student who is having a problem- I told her that I would ask the smart people here because I can’t figure it out!

Yesterday she brought be a tote bag she was knitting in the round. It was on a 24" circular needle and it was in a mobius. She has no idea how it got twisted. I messed with it and tried to un-twist it but was unable to. Finally I threaded the live stitches onto a piece of yarn to see if I could do anything with it off the needles. Nope, it’s a mobius!

So I told her that I had no idea how it happened, assumed it was a freak accident and she started over. Today she comes back with a smaller project on 16" needles. She had knitted about 2" in the round and then noticed that it had twisted. She said that she hadn’t noticed any twisting before that.

I have had my cast on and twisted the stitches before but usually by the time I get to the end of my first round it’s very obvious that there’s a problem. I told her to knit the first row plain and then join in the round, which she did on the second one. I also showed her how to make sure that all her stitches were facing the same way.

Any ideas? Tell me I’m not completely crazy!:whoosh:

#2

I am sure that she is twisting the stitches before she joins them. Doing what you told her is probably the most sure way of avoiding that. It can be kind of hard to see if she has a lot of stitches on the needles.

#3

She maybe just doesn’t know how to tell if the sts are being twisted either flat or circularly. Have her bring her work to you before she joins so you can show her how it should look.

#4

That’s why nearly every pattern I’ve seen for circular knitting says, “join, being careful not to twist stitches.” :slight_smile:

I’m quite sure she just had it twisted as she started and didn’t realize it. Showing her how to line them up so she can see what “right” looks like should help avoid it in the future.

#5

thanks everyone!

I was always under the impression that knitting a mobius was pretty difficult so I couldn’t figure out how it was happening by just twisting stitches.

She cast on again and I joined for her and knit the first round so we’ll see if that fixes it!

#6

What a great teacher you are to help them out like that.

Let her know that a lot of more experienced knitters have done the very same thing. Don’t want her to get discouraged at this point.

#7

Well it isn’t technically a mobius… sort of faux mobius really.

#8

Okay. Maybe I should know this, but what IS mobius?

:??

#9

I didn’t know what they were either till I seen Knitty Gritty and Cat Bordhi was on…hereis a link to the pattern she showed…:thumbsup: