How to knit a circle

At first glance, knitting a circle would seem fairly straightforward. You could either start at the middle and increase slowly around until your circle was the right size. This works well in lace knitting, because the yarnover (YO) holes help take out the bulk, allowing what is essentially a cone (you're knitting a spiral, not a series of rings that start and end at the exact same place) to lay flat as a circle. What if there are no YOs in your design?

Being an engineer, I went to the trusty graph paper, thinking just start with a few stitches, increase one on each until you reach the right circumference for your circle. Nope, that makes a diamond. And to add to the complexity, what if your gauge is 3 sts / 4 rows to one inch? Not square (or rectilinear, to be more precise).

Enter knitter's graph paper! You can chart anything no matter how wacky your stitch/row gauge. Here's some I use a lot:

www.tata-tatao.to/knit/matrix/e-index.html

Now on to chart my 36 stitch by 48 row circle (you'd think that would make an oval, wouldn't you?!?)...

Mark the diameter points both horizontally and vertically, and mark the center of the circle. Using a compass (come on, you know you still have your old metal one from 6th grade in a drawer somewhere), trace out your circle:



Now just repeat that evenly in each direction, and you have your circle chart!