In this video, I'm going to run through the techniques used in this ball.
It's a pattern I wrote many, many years ago, back before I was doing videos.
It's called Orb-It Knit Ball.
And I've updated the pattern a little bit.
If you'd like to get your free copy of the pattern to follow along, just click the little
"i" in the upper right-hand corner to be whisked away to my website.
And it uses double-pointed needles and some make one stitches.
It's not a super easy pattern, because there are a few different things going on, but if
you're not sure if you have the skills to do it, go and watch the video.
It's not very long.
I'm gonna show you everything that we do here.
So, I have these different knit balls, different sizes in front of me.
And the thing that strikes me as so funny is these are all knit with the exact same
number of stitches.
It's just the yarn weight and the needle size that makes it different.
This is super bulky and using size 13, U.S. 13 needles, and this is bulky, using U.S.
9 needles.
And this one is worsted using size 6 needles.
And this one is not much smaller, but it's DK using size 3.
And this one is actually bulky also, but I filled it with plastic pallets to make a juggling
ball.
Want you to make two more to actually juggle with it, but it makes a heavy ball that it's
fun, it's fun to play with.
And you can use this for anything.
You put a squeaky inside, make it a dog toy.
You make Christmas ornaments, you know.
You guys are more creative about that sort of thing than I am.
I'm just going to run through the techniques used.
And so I will get these out of the way, and let's take a look.
We are going to use double-pointed needles, and we're going to cast on very few stitches,
just six stitches.
And you have the option of casting all six stitches onto one needle and then sliding
them to the other needles, or you can do like I do.
This is my preferred way, is to just cast them on directly, just three needles, two
stitches each.
Okay, I'm using bulky yarn and size 9 needles for this, if you're curious.
Now, I have this set out in front of me, and the very hardest part of this whole project
is the very first row, but once you pass that, it gets a lot easier.
I have the working yarn coming from this stitch here, which means my next stitch is here on
this front needle.
I'm going to scoot this stitch to the end of the needle and get my second needle in
there to knit it.
And now that I've knit that and the next one, I'm all joined in the round.
For the first round, I want to knit six stitches.
I just knit two.
Okay, we actually wanted to keep count there, because we don't have a marker marking the
beginning of our round yet, but I just knit six stitches.
Now, we're going to start the increases.
And we're still kind of in the woods here.
This is still kind of difficult knitting here.
We don't have very many stitches going yet, and we're going to start doing increases.
What we're going to do on each needle is knit one, make one, knit one, make one.
And so we're going to turn these two stitches on needle into four.
And you can...if you have a preferred way of doing a make one stitch, either right or
left, it's totally your choice.
I'm going to do make one lefts.
So, I knit the first stitch.
I want to find the bar between the stitches to do the make one stitch.
I pull it up with my right needle and put my left needle in there from front to back.
And then I'm going to get my...
Actually, let me just do it this way.
I'm going to get my needle into the back loop of that stitch, which is not always very easy.
So, I put it into the front loop and swing it over, knit that stitch.
That's a make one.
Knit one, then I'm gonna make one again.
And the make one this time, the bar between the stitches is here.
Once you start to pull things apart a little bit, it's the only horizontal strand.
So, I put my needle in there from front to back, get my needle tip into the back loop
of that stitch.
And if you want a really slow demonstration of the make one stitch, maybe you wanna see
what make one right looks like, I'll give you a link right here.
It gets a lot easier after this first round.
Actually, let me show that again.
The make one stitch is the only horizontal bar between the needles.
[00:05:58] [Silence]
[00:06:18]
You know, I timed myself knitting one of these.
It took me 40 minutes.
So if you're gonna rush to get a ball knit, all you need is 40 minutes.
Okay, so now I have 12 stitches.
I still haven't marked the beginning of my rounds, so I'm going to count these stitches
to make sure I get back to the beginning of my round.
Excuse me.
[00:06:45] [Silence]
[00:07:11]
Okay, now I have enough going here that I can go ahead and mark the beginning of my
round with this clippy marker.
And when I put this here between these two needles, I know the spot between these two
needles is the beginning of my round.
And as I create more and more fabric, I can keep moving that up.
Now, after I finish the knit all the stitches with 12 stitches, the next row is knit two
make one.
Then it's knit three make one, then it's knit four make one up until we get to knit seven
make one.
And your piece will be this size when you get there.
Oh, actually, a little bit shorter, because there are some plain rounds between.
But what I wanna show you is that I have...I continue to move the marker up so I can easily
see where the beginning of my round is, and this point, we're at a good point to go ahead
and weave in the end from the cast-on row.
So, I'm gonna take a tapestry needle, and I work with double-pointed needles a lot,
so I have a pretty, nice, little hole here.
I'm not really worried about the stuffing coming out of there.
But if I wanted to tighten this up, this is the way I would do it.
I have these stitches, these six stitches from the cast-on row.
I'm going to put my needle in.
That's actually the slip knot.
I'm gonna skip that.
I'm gonna put my needle in to each one, or I can put it into every other one if I like.
It's being consistent.
And then once I do that, I have the option of pulling and really tightening it up, poking
the end down through the center, really tightening it up.
And so that looks good.
We don't have to worry about any stuffing coming out of there.
And if you're not as familiar with double-pointed needles, it's likely that you ended up with
a hole that was a little bit bigger.
It's totally normal.
And then I can go ahead and weave in this end on the inside of the work.
It's actually not that important.
I'm gonna weave in the end, and that'll hold the little tightening I did there, but I could
just leave it there and let it become part of the stuffing, right?
Okay, I've got that.
I am gonna leave that there and make it part of the stuffing.
What was I going to say?
Oh, yes, after you finish all the make one stitches, all of the increases across, there
are five rows that are just plain knitting.
And I've talked to some people and seen on Ravelry what people are doing.
You can use those five rows where nothing is increasing or decreasing to have some fun.
You can do a stripe there.
You can do some Fair Isle there.
If you wanna do, you know, Christmas balls or something, that's a good spot to do it,
the five plain rounds of knitting before you get into the decreases.
And the decreases are easier than the increases were.
You're gonna run through a series of, you know, knit six, knit two together, knit six,
knit two together and then alternate those with knit rounds.
It's all on the pattern.
If you made it through to make one stitches, the knit two togethers are easy, okay.
And then we get to this point.
I am almost done here.
I just have...what do I have here?
I just have a knit two together around left to do.
I think I'm on row 29.
I have in the pattern exactly when to stop and to put stuffing in the ball before you
kinda close up the end.
And I have the stuffing here.
Let me show you this.
This is how much stuffing I have.
I have already tested it out.
I know how much I need.
There's everything that you stuff if you've ever done knit toys.
You need twice as much stuffing as you think you're going to need.
And I'll tell you that it always looks better a little overstuffed than understuffed.
It ends up looking kind of lopsided if you don't get enough in there.
So, I know all of this is gonna fit in there, because it was already in there once.
I took it out for the video.
Wow, how fun.
It needs some work to get it distributed evenly so that it's nice and round.
And then I'm gonna go ahead and finish this up with knit two together around.
Once I do that, the hole in the top ends up being pretty small.
I wouldn't wanna try to put the stuffing in.
You just stretch it out, I think.
And then the last round is...actually, the last one, you don't have to do the last round.
No, I'm not gonna do it.
It's a knit round.
And for consistency with the other end, you might wanna do it, but it's not essential.
Then I break the yarn, and I'm going to run the yarn through the stitches in the same
order that I was knitting them and just take them off the needle as I do.
Tighten that up.
And then you have a couple of options here for securing this last end.
I'm gonna show you the most secure way.
I'm using wool yarn.
I could just poke this through to the stuffing and never think about it again.
But if you're using something that isn't wool and you're worried about it, like, coming
unraveled or untied or something, this is not untied, coming unraveled, this is what
I do to secure non-wool ends on something.
I've just split the plies half and half.
I'm going to thread two of those plies or half of those plies on the tapestry needle
and move it just a half a stitch away from where the other two are.
And then I can tie these two halves together.
Okay, so that's going to keep that secured and tightened.
Now, I'm just going to weave the end into the stuffing of the ball.
Poke it out the other side and cut it short.
Now, the end is forever lost inside.
And this is going to take...
You know, it's because I used that stuffing once before.
It's kind of in clamp, so it will take me a few minutes to get this really round, but
it will happen.
That's it, the Orb-It Knit It Ball pattern.
Again, the pattern is free if you wanna jump over to my website and download it.
Good luck.
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