I learned to knit moebii from Cat Bordhi at her Magical Moebius Festival. Cat tells animal stories as she teaches the moebius cast on, and that makes it so much fun and easy to learn. And the cast on is just cool and easy. Cat even demonstrates casting on behind her back.
After knitting a test moebius on some yarn I had brought with me, I decided I needed some of the good stuff in the form of Fleece Artist Kid Silk (now being discontinued so I had to get it while I could).
I glanced in one of Cat’s Magical Knitting books, where there is a chart useful for estimating how many stitches need to be cast on for a moebius of a given size, provided that one knows the gauge. Note that I could have also asked Cat.
I didn’t know what gauge I’d get with the Kid Silk on US#10 needles. Not a clue.
Did I let that stop me? Heck no. I’m all experienced knitter and whatnot.
I looked at the chart. hmmmm… the smaller the gauge, the more stitches need to be cast on to get the same size of moebius. I know that. I’m experienced. Sometimes I’m even advanced. Good grief. How hard can this be?
I cast on 100 stitches because I overheard Cat tell someone else that was a goodly number. Once again, I could have asked Cat myself, but deep in my heart I knew the first thing she’d ask about was gauge, and then I’d have to swatch. And I wanted to go directly to knitting because it’s just so cool the way that the moebii knit up all weirdly with your knit stitches magically turning into purls and all and swatching would slow that down a whole 15 minutes, probably. Instant gratification is such a seductive thing, isn’t it?
100 stitches just didn’t look like enough. Not nearly enough. So I cast on another 100. Then, because I wanted a little extra length, I cast on another 40 or so for good measure.
I can hear you laughing out there, gentle reader.
After casting on, I knit obsessively on my moebius. I didn’t even want to stop to knit socks. Although I did, because the socks were way cool, too. But I knit the socks quickly so I could go back to the moebius. I knit on it most of Friday, and all Friday evening, and Friday late into the night, and most of Saturday, and Saturday night I finally started to bind off.
I kept thinking that there’s really a deceptively lot of knitting in those moebii. Lots. It takes a long time to knit a round. And the binding off takes probably forever, even though I chose to do a knit-2-together bind off instead of the applied i-cord that is recommended. I was so happy to have it finally bound off.
Then I tried it on.
yeah
In the picture, Cat is modeling my results. Just a little bit long, dontcha think? Even wrapped three times around my neck it’s a little long, and then it’s a little on the bulky side as well and starts to cover up my face as well as losing its moebius-ness. When I told Cat I’d cast on 240 stitches, she giggled like crazy (in the nicest possible way, of course), and then suggested gently that less than half of that would have been probably closer to the right amount.
So I decided it would be fun to see how many people could wear it at once. If you click on the picture, it will bring up a little slide show — or at least that’s the theory. Just click on the right side of the picture for the next in the series, or the left side for the previous one. Each picture shows another person being added to the pool of moebius wearers. In the last picture, a couple of people can be seen only as hair. But 11 fellow knitters managed to fit in there. 11. Eleven.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that gauge doesn’t matter. 🙄
And, yes gentle reader, I realize that moebii have no proper inside or outside, since as the Wiki tells us, a Moebius is a non-orientable surface with only one side and one edge. (But I like this site better, because it has such a cool little animated gif of interlocking, turning gears arranged as a Moebius strip.) So that means that the whole world was either inside or outside my moebius, or both, or neither.
But stuff like that makes my head spin a bit, both with weirdness and with the sheer coolness of the whole thing. I prefer to think of those that have it around their neck as being inside and those who don’t have it around their necks as being outside.
Regardless… the three dimensional representation of a Moebius strip that I knit was way too long.
It was frogged and re-knit. Alice and K of Tangle are modeling it. As you can see, it’s really a bit too tight for two. But it fits one just about right.
In search of some decent light, I looped it over the back of one of my rocking chairs. (I love rocking chairs. My former brother-in-law once asked me why I couldn’t seem to have a chair in my house that didn’t rock or swivel or recline or otherwise move. But why would I?) This chair is one of my favorites. The back is at a slightly strange angle because Moo Cow was occupying the seat, trying to pretend that she didn’t really want to grab the Moebius and start eating the yarn. Not really. Well… maybe just a little.
I love the colors in this yarn. The silk content (30%) gives it such a pretty sheen, and the mohair makes it so soft. Yum. I knit it on larger needles to give a rather loose fabric. I think the drape is just about perfect. I’m very pleased. Now.
Note: I acquired this yarn by purchasing this poncho kit. I’m not a poncho person – just wanted the yarn. Kid Silk has been discontinued by Fleece Artist. The kit included 410yds of Kid Silk. I used less than 1/2 of it on the moebius. The remainder is in the stash with no project in mind yet.
The particulars:
- Yarn: Fleece Artist Kid Silk (70% Kid mohair, 30% silk / 200m; 100g) colorway: Mermaid.
- Needles: Knitpicks circulars – US#10 (6mm) tips, 47″ cable
- Pattern: from Cat Bordhi’s A Treasury of Magical Knitting, with a few minor modifications.
- Techniques used:
- Moebius cast on.
- Knit 3 rnds, purl 3 rnds, until it was “wide enough,” ending with 3 rnds of seed stitch
- Bind off: K2tog.