How to Knit I-Cord

Hi there! I'm Corrina Ferguson for The Knitting Circle. In this video, we're going to learn how to knit I-cord, so let's get started! So we're going to learn how to do an I-cord. An I-cord is a length of knitted cord that's super easy to make. We have an I-cord that goes around the waist or under the bust of the Halaine Tee, and you can see here, it's a nice, stretchy, very neat and tidy knitted cord. So we're going to learn how to do that, and it's super duper easy. When we do an I-cord, we always want to use either double pointed needles or circular needles, and the reason for that is because you have to work a row and then you have to start again at the beginning of that same row. You're going to always be working in the same direction, so you have to be able to slide the work back and forth. You can do that on circular needles and you can do that on double pointed needles. I prefer double pointed cause they're shorter. If you're going to do it on double point or on, on, sorry if you're going to do it on a circular needle, I would suggest a shorter circular needle because you have to slide them around, and you'll see in a second what I mean there, just because if you have a super long circular needle that's going to be a pain in the butt. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to cast on for this I-cord. I'm going to do three stitches. Easy peasy. And then I am going to knit, slide this to the end, make sure I've got my working yarn and not my short yarn. And I'm going to knit those three stitches. So I'm going to knit one, two and three. And then, instead of turning this over and working the other way, we're going to slide it to the end of this DPN and we're going to knit them again. So we go knit, knit, knit, knit, knit. We just keep knitting, and we always slide it to the end. And like I said, that's why, if you're going to use circular needles, I would suggest some slightly shorter ones just because of the sliding stuff. If you've got like a 40 inch needle that's going to get tiresome pretty quick. And then depending on the length of your I-cord you're just going to keep knitting along here. And you'll notice I've got a few rows knitted here. If you turn it over it looks like just normal knitting on the back, but if you give a little tug on the end of this, it starts to form into a cord, but you need it a little bit longer in order for it to form into a cord. Now, once you actually have some length to this you can see how when you pull on it, it becomes this really neat and tidy cord. And you just continue doing this. You knit every row, you slide it to the other end of that DPN, DPN being the abbreviation for double pointed needle of course. Slide it to the other end and you knit again. And when you first do it, you can see on the back it's kind of opened up and you see the purl bumps on the back of it, but as it continues and you give it this little tug, it neatens up. If you're going to do a very, very long length of I-cord, such as the I-cord for the T-shirt that I showed you earlier there are little machines that will crank the I-cord out. And I will tell you that they're very nifty because you just weave your yarn onto them and you crank a little handle and it will make miles and miles of I-cord for you without all of the knitting, and it's all nice and perfect. The only thing with those machines is they don't work on like a super heavyweight yarn. I don't think you could get any more than like a worsted weight in. So, you get your I-cord the length that you want, and you're ready to finish it off. Well, you finish it off just like anything else. I actually like to slip the very first stitch of the row, and then knit the second stitch, and then pass that first stitch over, knit the final stitch, pass that over. And then you've got your loop here, and then we can bring our working yarn through. Oops. That one got really long. I thought it was a little shorter. Bring our working yarn through. And, this is out of the way, you give this a little tug and this a little tug and you have a beautiful length of I-cord. Thank you so much for joining me to learn how to knit I-cord! Check out our website for more great videos!