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It’s so easy to make pumpkins on a circular knitting machine, you’ll find it hard to make just one! I made three of the large ones shown already but I might have to make a few more before the season is out.
The good news is pumpkins that don’t have faces can serve as decor through fall all the way to Thanksgiving, so you can make as many pumpkins on a circular knitting machine as you want and leave them out for a few months.
Which Circular Knitting Machine?
I made these pumpkins on the Addi Express King Size circular knitting machine, which has 48 pins. You can also use a large Sentro.
If you have a smaller machine of course you can make pumpkins on a circular knitting machine, too, but you will want to work fewer rounds.
For a Sentro 22 machine you might want to work only 25 or 30 rounds to make a sweet little pumpkin, but you can experiment and see what size you like. (On a little machine it takes about 10 minutes to make a pumpkin, so if you don’t like it it’s no big effort to rip it out and try again.
Supplies for Pumpkins on a Circular Knitting Machine
In addition to the knitting machine of your choice, you’ll also need yarn. All of the pumpkins shown here used worsted weight yarn. One is Lion Brand Heartland in colorway Gateway Arch, the one shown in the tutorial is some long-ago discontinued yarn I can’t even remember what it is, and the third is Caron Simply Soft in the appropriately named color Pumpkin.
As you’ll see below, two of the pumpkins are made with a single layer of knitting and one (the Caron one) with two layers so the stuffing doesn’t show through as much. For a single layer you’ll need about 75 yards; the larger one took 145 yards.
You’ll also need scissors, a yarn needle (a nice long plastic one is great for this purpose) and polyfil stuffing.
Knitting Pumpkins on a Circular Knitting Machine
If you’ve ever made anything on a circular knitting machine before you already know everything you need to know to knit pumpkins on a circular knitting machine, but let’s do a quick run through.
Start by casting on to every other pin all the way around the machine.
Crank for 50 rounds.
Cut the working yarn, leaving a long (no, really long) tail. Thread the tail onto a yarn needle and crank around one more time, grabbing each stitch with the yarn needle and sliding them onto the yarn tail.
When all the stitches are off the machine, pull tight. I like to go through the stitches again to help make that hole as closed as possible.
From here, begin to add stuffing as you like. You’ll see that on these 50 round ones the stuffing is visible. I don’t actually mind that, but you probably want to use real stuffing and not random bits of leftover yarn and things for these if you can see it when the pumpkin is done. (If you don’t like this, read on for the solution.)
As you stuff, you can pull on the yarn from the cast on edge to close up that end a bit and begin to see what your finished pumpkin will look like. I liked these kind of squat but you can make them taller if you like.
Once you have the amount of stuffing you want, pull tight and close up this end.
Now you can add segments to your pumpkin by taking the needle up through the center of the pumpkin with the yarn on the outside. Pull tight to form the segment. Repeat as many times as you like (an odd number is nice but whatever you like the look of is fine).
Use your remaining yarn tails to close up the centers as needed and bury them inside the pumpkin.
Making a Less Open Stitched Pumpkin
Where these pumpkins sit in my house, you have to get pretty close to them to see the stuffing, so I actually don’t mind it, but if you want a more solid, less see-through pumpkin, it’s easy to do.
The process is the same, just crank 100 rounds instead of 50.
The finishing begins much the same as a circular knitting machine hat. Close both ends as described above, making a sort of closed tube. Fold one end into the other to give it a hat shape, then stuff as described above.
I had long enough yarn ends that I pulled them through the inside of the pumpkin to the open end, then wove in and out of the stitches to close this end.
I sewed the hole closed by stitching through the stitches that weren’t picked up on the first pass.
This makes for a not very pretty closure, but it’s nice and flat if you make that side the bottom.
For my double-thick pumpkin I didn’t add the segments, but you absolutely can. Play around with making squat round pumpkins or taller skinnier pumpkins or whatever kind you like.
And I hope the unknown yarn pumpkin reminds you that pumpkins do not have to be traditional pumpkin orange! I love gold colored pumpkins, peachy pink pumpkins, teal pumpkins, white pumpkins; I’ve even stitched a purple pumpkin!
Finishing Your Pumpkin
The pumpkins on a circular knitting machine are great by themselves, but I know a lot of people like stems on their pumpkins, too. There are a lot of options.
You can use a stick or a cinnamon stick cut or broken to size.
You can knit a bit of knit cord, whether by hand or using an I-cord maker.
Or you can crochet a little stem. Mine was made with maybe a couple of yards of random brown yarn and a size H/8/5mm crochet hook. I did a chain 5, slip stitch to join in the round, then did a single crochet in each stitch around until I liked the size, then fastened off.
With either a knit or crochet stem you can sew it to the center of what you decide is the top of your pumpkin. A stick can just be poked in the middle.
These pumpkins on a circular knitting machine are so fun and easy to make, I can’t guarantee I’m done making them yet. Have you ever made circular knitting machine pumpkins? I’d love to hear your recipe!
