More than once a knitter has said to me that they accidentally knitted one of my patterns flat, with good results! At first I didn’t understand how that is possible, until I tried it myself: if the design is simple enough, the flat version just needs a little seaming to be very similar to the circular version, with the difference that a smooth stockinette stitch surface will end up as garter stitch if you knit every row.
With this in mind, I recently tried making a completely 3-dimensional design that only used flat knitting, with a little I-cord thrown in.
I was a little surprised to see that if I hadn’t know how it was made, my first guess would have been that it had been knitted on double-pointed needles. I know there are a lot of sophisticated 3-D designs that use flat knitting, but it was fun to try it myself!
So flat knitting doesn’t have to be simple or plain or really flat at all, in the end. I know lots of people prefer it, so I hope to do more “flat” designs in the future.
(By the way, I have no particular plans for the unnamed buggy guys pictured above. But I’m open to ideas!)