How to Knit a Cord with the Clover Wonder Knitter

Clover sent me their new Wonder Knitter to try out and review. Learn how to knit a cord with it in this tutorial. This upgraded take on a spool knitter is so fast and easy, it’s addictive. Create all sorts of cords and other fun projects in no time. It’s great for kids too!

What is the Wonder Knitter?

The Clover Wonder Knitter is a simple knitting loom that creates cords. This type of loom is often called a French knitter, or a spool knitter. But the Clover Wonder Knitter takes the traditional French knitting tool to a whole new level!

Get the Clover Wonder Knitter on Amazon

With a normal French knitter, you have to wind the yarn around the pins manually. This means for each round, you have to put down or shift your grip on your pick so you can pick up the working yarn. Then you wind the yarn around the pins, and then pick up your pick again to knit. Constantly changing your grip makes this a slow process.

The Wonder Knitter has two game-changing features: rotating heads, and a yarn guide. Combined, these make the winding process more automatic, so you never have to change your grip!

Rotating Heads

With a rotating head, you don’t have to move the knitter or the working yarn to cover each pin. Simply twist the head, and make the pins move! The scalloped shape of the rotating heads make it easy to turn with your thumb, while maintaining your grip on the body of the knitting tool.

The Wonder Knitter comes with 2, rotating heads. The heads snap on and off, so you can change them out easily. The purple one has 3 pins, for a 3-stitch cord. The yellow one has 6 pins, for a larger, 6-stitch cord. For this tutorial, I chose the 3-stitch cord.

Yarn Guide

The other important innovation is the yarn guide. This holds your working yarn in place, so that as the top rotates, the yarn winds automatically around the pins. With these two features combined, you never need to pick up your yarn or change your grip while knitting!

For Righties and Lefties

You can hold the Clover Wonder Knitter with either your right or left hand. It has a cut out on one side so it’s not totally symmetrical, but it feels comfortable in either hand.

I am right-handed, so I hold the tool in my left hand and the pick in my right. To use the Wonder Knitter left-handed, just reverse all my left/right instructions. If I say right, go left. If I say clockwise, go counterclockwise.

Choose a Yarn

You can knit a cord using a variety of different yarns! As long as the yarn is thin enough for the pins to hold it without slipping, it should work. The thicker your yarn is, the more dense your cord will be. Thinner yarns will produce a lighter and stretchier cord. Here are two cords I made, one with worsted weight yarn and one with fingering weight yarn.

Get creative and try other materials too, like thread, ribbons, or even leather. If it fits and it’s flexible, you can knit a cord with it!

Cast On

To make tensioning easier, I like to add a little weight to my tail. Make a slip knot, then attach a stitch marker to the loop and tighten it. If you don’t have a stitch marker handy, you can use a paperclip, safety pin, or just about anything with a little weight that you can attach to the loop.

Now feed the weighted tail down through the center of the Wonder Knitter.

Bring the working yarn up to the right of one of the pins. Wrap it around the pin clockwise.

Now rotate the top to the left, so that the next pin to the right is in front. Bring the yarn up to the right of this pin and wrap it clockwise as well. Repeat this for all remaining pins – in this case there is only one more.

When all pins have been wrapped, lay the working yarn into the grove on the yarn guide. For better tension control, hold the working yarn against the bottom of the wonder knitter.

Knit a Cord

Continue rotating the top until the working yarn lays across the first pin again.

Use your hook to bring the loop on that pin up and over the working yarn, and off the pin. You have just made one knit stitch.

Repeat this process with each pin in order, around and around, until the cord reaches the length you want.

Bind Off

Cut the working yarn, leaving a tail long enough to work one more round of stitches. Rotate the top to work the next stitch. This time, instead of pulling the loop over and off, pull the tail down through the loop and all the way out.

Place the working yarn back in the yarn guide, and repeat this process for the remaining stitches. Once the working yarn has been woven through all the stitches in this way, you can remove your knit cord from the Wonder Knitter. Pull all the stitches off the pins, and pull on the ends to tighten.

Remove the stitch marker, and pull out your slip knot.

Uses for French Knit Cords

The cord I used in this tutorial is made with King Cole Summer yarn. I used this yarn for my Stepping Out Summer Scarf pattern.

I designed the Stepping Out Sun Hat to coordinate with the scarf, and wanted a way to tie the two together. So I knit a cord with the same yarn and used it as a decorative tie on the hat!

Stepping Out Sun Hat - Free crochet pattern on Stitches n Scraps

Try wearing French knit cords on their own as headbands. Use them as ribbons to tie up gifts. Add beads to make bracelets and necklaces. Or, make strong and dense cords for bag handles.

French Knitted Knotted Coasters from My Poppet Makes
*Image courtesy of My Poppet Makes – used with permission.*

There are lots of projects out there using French knit cords, and crafty creators are posting new ones every day! Coil your cord up into a cute flower, or weave several together to make a fun coaster. Search French Knitting for more ideas. The possibilities are endless!

Get your Clover Wonder Knitter Now!