Another Pi Day Celebration

Wow! It’s Pi Day again already. Today is March 14 or 3/14 as we Americans like to write it. Pi is 3.14, so some clever mathy person decided that March 14 should be celebrated as Pi day. Being that I am a math geek I’m totally into that.

I use Pi to figure out the geometry for a lot of my design work, especially when I am designing hats and determining how (or IF) my gauge is going to get me the size hat I want. This particularly applies to working crown down hats that involve creating a flat circle to start.

Today I thought we should take a look at crocheting circles. No Pi calculations needed, though you can if you really want.

I don’t recall when I first learnt about the “rules” for getting circles to come out flat in crochet. But I have used those as a guideline in much of my design work over the past 10 years, even before I was designing professionally.  Here are the “rules” with some additional thoughts.

To create a circle, especially when worked into an adjustable slip knot (or magic circle if you prefer), you need to consider the height of your stitches. You also need to consider your stitch tension and consistency. Working circles is one technique that will really show you if you are deforming your stitches. Either making them too tall, too short, too wide or too thin, you are looking for the ultimate “Goldie Locks” zone of your stitch tension to get your circles to come out Just Right.

I’m demonstrating today using the 4 most common stitches in traditional crochet: Single, Half-Double, Double and Treble.

Making a circle using Single Crochet stitches: The magic number is 6, you want to have 6 sc stitches in your first round and you will add 6 stitches to each consecutive round. Round 2 will have 12 stitches, Round 3 will have 18 stitches, Round 4 will have 24 stitches.

Making a circle using Half-Double Crochet stitches: The magic number is 8, you will have 7 hdc and a ch-2 (that counts as a hdc) in your first round and you will add 8 stitches to each consecutive round. You will start each round with a ch-2 that will be counted as a hdc stitch for your end of round counts. Round 2 will have 16 stitches, Round 3 will have 24 stitches, Round 4 will have 32 stitches.

Making a circle using Double Crochet stitches: The magic number is 12, you will have 11 dc and a ch-3 (that counts as a dc) in your first round and you will add 12 stitches to each consecutive round. You will start each round with a ch-3 that will be counted as a dc stitch for your end of round counts. Round 2 will have 24 stitches, Round 3 will have 36 stitches, Round 4 will have 48 stitches.

Making a circle using Treble Crochet stitches: The magic number is 16, you will have 15 Tr and a ch-4 (that counts as a Tr) in your first round and you will add 16 stitches to each consecutive round. You will start each round with a ch-4 that will be counted as a Tr stitch for your end of round counts. Round 2 will have 32 stitches, Round 3 will have 48 stitches, Round 4 will have 64 stitches.

I hope these rules will help you with crocheting circles and that you have a great Pi Day. Maybe celebrate with some crocheted circles and some Pie.