French Knit

Have you ever wanted to know what a "mushroom knitter" was? Do you want to knit, but think that the usual method of knit and purl is too hard? If so, then you should try French knitting or spool knitting. There are many steps, but it's much easier than you'd think.

Steps

1. Set up your knitting dolly. Make your own by pressing four pushpins around the hole of a spool of thread.
2. Pull out a length of wool (yarn) about 8 in (20cm) long and insert it through the knitting dolly top to bottom so you have a bit of a tail hanging out 2 in (5cm) to 4 in (10cm).
3. Grasp the knitting dolly with your left hand and the yarn coming out of the top of the hole with your right.
4. Label each of the four pins (mentally, of course) as north, south, east, and west. No need for pins to correlate to actual directions as long as you don't switch north and east halfway through the knitting process.
5. Wrap the ball side of the yarn clockwise around the north pin.
6. Wrap the yarn around the west pin so that it is taut between them. The taut yarn should run on the inside of the pins, closer to the central hole.
7. Continue wrapping, counterclockwise, in this manner with the south and east pins.
8. Repeat the whole wrapping thing so that you have two loops on each pin.

Knitting

1. Starting with the north pin, pick up the bottom (first) loop with your needle and pull it over the pin, then drop it, leaving only the top and second loop on the pin.
2. Repeat this process with each pin, working counterclockwise (i.e. n, w, s, e). Pull the stitch tight by gently tugging at the tail coming out of the bottom of the knitter's hole.
3. Wrap the yarn as you did before, but only once. Again, you should have 2 loops on each pin.
4. Do the whole bottom-loop-over-pin procedure again.
5. Continue wrapping and dropping loops until you can see the knitted part of it protruding from the bottom. It should form a stretchy, four-sided tube that tapers to a point.
6. Knit until your tube is a satisfactory length.
7. Cast Off.
8. Pick up the single remaining loop on the north pin and lift it over the west pin.
9. Pick up the bottom loop of the west pin, pull it over, and drop it just like you have been doing.
10. Repeat for the west and south pins.
11. When only one loop is left on the east pin, cut the yarn with an ample tail, thread it through the loop, and unhook it from the pin.
12. Finished!

Tips

• French knitting looks especially cool with thread of many colors (the rainbow kind that fades).
• What's great about french knitting is that it's way easier than regular knitting!
• Example of something you could make.
• You can buy knitting dollies that have so many as 20 pins for making huge tubes-but only buy one if you're willing to spend hours just to make a foot-long tube.

Warnings

• Make sure your yarn is wrapping along the inside of the pins, not the outside. It's really important!

Things You'll Need

• Some yarn- any kind will do, but stringy types are a little hard to work with.
• A knitting dolly or mushroom knitter, or make your own (see step 1).
• A nice dull yarn needle or crochet hook.
• A comfy place to sit, possibly for an hour, and a snack and drink

Sources and Citations

• Videos provided by Pysselbolaget
• Making Stuff For Kids from Black Dog Publishing

What links here

• Do a French Knot