Circular Knitting: Mock Circle Gauge

Video Transcript

"So, for starters, like we've talked about before, I'm going to make you do the dreaded gauge, and for starters, I'm going to work on the bulky hat, which is telling me that for gauge I need three and half stitches to the inch, in what's called a mock circular gauge. Because, what happens when you knit a regular gauge, you're knitting on the front, or the right side, and then the wrong side in a circular pattern, you're only hitting the right side, and if you don't do a gauge where you're just hitting the right side, then it's going to be askew, because your pattern, when you did knit in the wrong side can be a little bit different. So, you'll cast on the stitches that you need to check your gauge. So, safe it's getting three and a half to the inch, you'd want to cast on fourteen to twenty stitches. Not going to do that many, because it'll take too long, so you cast down your stitches the same you would normally, and I'm doing this on the double pointed needles for a reason. You're going to see in just one moment. And, what you're going to do, is not knitting your tail, you're going to knit across your stitches the way you would normally, because this hat is all done with the knit stitch, there's no pearling. And you'll knit across your row. And then, when you get to the end of your row, and here's the mock circular part, instead of turning your needle around and working these stitches, you're going to slide this to the beginning of your needle, like this. So, here's my ball yarn, and I'm going to go into the first stitch to knit, and I'm going to wrap this, and I'm going to drape it, so I've got all this big loopy stuff behind, and I'm going to knit the next row. And, I'm going to do this, every row, so that ultimately all I'm doing is the knit stitch, which is all I'm going to be doing when I knit the hat, but I don't have to cast on enough stitches to be in the round. So, again, you're going to come to your row, and your end stitches are going to be super loopy, and not helpful at all. You're going to slide it to the end, and then you'll knit again, and you're going to want to make a four by four swatch, and then what happens, when you take it off the needle to measure it, of course you'll have more stitches, is it doesn't pull. If you pulled it tight, it wouldn't lay flat. So that's why you drape the yarn around the back, so that it doesn't get in the way of measuring it."