How to Join for Working in the Round

If you are working any project in round, after your cast-on you will likely be told to “join for working in the round, making sure not to twist stitches” – in the video tutorial below I will show you how to do this! In the lesson below, I have a small/medium amount of stitches .

---

But what if you have a large number of stitches?

It’s the same technique, but you just have to be extra careful about your stitches not being twisted (since it’s much easier for them to twist when you have a lot of them on the circular!). The tutorial below demonstrates this situation:

---

What about joining after stitches have been picked-up and knit?

Another situation where patterns will tell you to “join for working in the round” is if you’ve picked-up and knit around an opening such as a neckline or armhole (as shown in the photo above). But in these situations, the joining process is a little different because the stitches are already attached to the fabric. So they are much less likely to twist (although it’s always a good idea to examine the stitches to make sure!).

So in these situations, when a pattern says to “join to work in the round”, it simply means bringing the needle tips together so that you’ll be ready to start working in the round on the first round in the instructions.

I have a video lesson about picking-up and knitting around a neckline and I have fast-forwarded it to the part where I talk about this part of the joining – you can watch it here.