Hi y’all! What a great site! I’ve poked around & can’t find the answer to a question I have. How does one do straight knitting on circular needles? I’m a beginner, can cast on, knit, pearl, increase, decrease, bind off. I get the principle of knitting in the round on circular needles, but was looking at a pattern that calls for using circular needles to knit a rectangle. It’s for a beginner poncho. I’m stumped! I just can’t get a visual. Can someone point me toward a tutorial, or explain how it works? I’m guessing you flip, or slide, or something?
Try envisioning it as though the two points of the circular needle were NOT attached via the cable. You would start off with your cast on stitches and working yarn on the left-hand needle of the circ and start knitting onto the right-hand needle just as you would if you were working on straight needles. Then, once you’ve worked all the stitches onto the right needle, you will turn your work around, exactly as you would with straight needles, and begin working onto the empty needle. Does that make sense??
The reason that a circular needle would be called for in a pattern could partly be preference of the person who wrote the pattern, or in some cases, for example when making an afghan that has a lot of stitches, it can be very difficult to fit a large # of stitches onto regular straight needles and the work can get very heavy and is difficult to support with the arm and wrist. When working with circular needles, the weight of the item is distrubuted much better and it puts a lot less strain on your body.
When you turn your work to begin working across the other way, you will have to slide your work to the other end so your working yarn will be at the left tip.
I hope I’m interpreting the poster’s question properly. Now I’m confused too!! :lol:
If you knit from the left needle point onto the right needle point, when you have worked all the stitches, before turning, all the worked stitches will be on the right needle point with the working yarn on the farthest left stitch. When you turn the work around to start the next row, your working yarn will be in the correct place, will it not??
The only reason I could think of needing to slide the stitches to the other end is if you are working i-cord.
I think the firat reply is the clearest…just pretend that you’re holding 2 straight needles that happen to be attached by a cord. IGNORE THE CORD and knit the same way you would on straight needles. I knit almost exclusively on circular needles since I knit on the bus to work and I find that circular needles are a lot “friendlier” to the person next to you!
I’ve never had to do this.