Month: September 2016

Hi, Cable Crossers! How’s it stitchin’? If you’re not already knitting along with us during our Deluxe Cable Collection fun times knitalong, you can learn more by reading previous blog posts here, viewing the collection here, and joining our Ravelry group here.

Today I’m going to talk about a topic that drives many a knitter craaaazzzy: increasing in pattern. I touched on  this topic during our Rocked knitalong last year. You can read that blog post here.

Why are patterns written with the confusing instructions of “maintain increased stitches in pattern” or other similar sounding garble? Well, there are a couple of reasons I do this in some patterns:

1. In my example below with the Greensboro Cardigan, I could have had the pattern running only up the center part of the sleeve and had the sides of the sleeve worked in stockinette or reverse stockinette. This would have made “maintaining increased stitches in patter” much easier. But I didn’t want to do that here. I wanted this sweater to have an all-over cable and rib patterning, gosh darn it.
2. If I was writing a pattern for only one size, I could easily explain in detail how each newly incorporated stitch should be treated. But when writing a pattern for 5-6 sizes, this is tough to do and keep the pattern a reasonable length.

As you may recall, Jannie (a new knitter here in the office) decided to knit the Greensboro Cardigan.

She did a little swatching, and then cast on for her sleeve, shown below:

Now that she’s done with her cuff ribbing, it’s time to move onto the pattern. Because Jannie is doing all kinds of new things with this project (making a garment, reading charts, doing twisted crosses), I didn’t want to add increasing in pattern to the mix. So I made her a special chart for her sleeve that shows all of the increases.

Here is what the chart looks like in the pattern:

The chart shows you the pattern repeat, and where to begin and end for your size. Once the increases begin, you must incorporate these new stitches into the already established cable and rib.

I’ve found that for some knitters, the idea of doing this just clicks. After learning a new stitch pattern, they’ve memorized it enough that intuitively they know what the next stitch should be. Of course this will depend on the complexity of a stitch pattern, as well.

With other knitters, it’s a struggle to wrap their head around. It’s just the difference in how our brains visualize and process. If you’re in the second group – don’t fret. You can do what I did for Jannie – make yourself a custom chart.

If you don’t have a graphics program or know how to make charts like this, it’s okay. You can do it by hand on graph paper. You can even use a spreadsheet program to make charts. After all, we’re just talking about a bunch of symbols inside of squares.

Happy cabling!

Greetings knitalongers! After joining shoulder seams on my Catawba River Poncho last week, I’m all set to pick up stitches for my side ribbing.

At this stage, my poncho is starting to look like a wearable thing. Which is exciting! All that’s left now is the side ribbing and then the collar. The side ribbing is more of the mock eyelet ribbing pattern, the same stitch pattern that’s used on the hem.

As you can see before the ribbing is added, I have an unattractive rolled stockinette thing going on here at the sides of my piece. But this will soon change.

The instructions in the pattern state to “pick up and knit 162 (167, 177) sts. To pick up and knit stitches, I am going to pull through loops of yarn and place them on my knitting needle to form my base row.

But first things first. How in the heck do I figure out how to pick up that many stitches evenly along this thing? It can seem like daunting task, but I’m going to share a few of the little tricks I like to use when doing this.

I’m making the small size, which means I need to pick up and knit 162 stitches. I’m going to break this down into more manageable numbers.

My usual method is to cut the length in half, then in half again, and again, until I get to a small enough section that doesn’t hurt my head. If I wanted in the illustration below, I could have halved the 20 stitch sections to 10, but I’m comfortable with 20 stitches at a time.

162 / 8 sections  = 20.25 stitches per section. I’m going to solve this by making 2 of my sections 21 stitches instead of 20. In the scheme of things, a stitch here or there rarely makes much of a difference. I placed safety pins at each of my divisions

Next, I need to figure out the rate at which I’m going to pick up my stitches. I counted the rows in a couple of my 20-stitch sections, and found that each of these had 24 rows. I will be picking up 20 stitches over 24 rows.

Now I’m going to put some of my fancy math skills to work with fractions! 20/24 can be reduced to 5/6. This means I’m going to be picking up 5 stitches for every 6 rows. For you, this number could be the same, but it could also be different. It all depends on your row gauge.

To pick up and knit, I’m first going to start at the right-hand side of the piece. In most cases when I’m picking up stitches, I like to pick up between the outermost stitch and the next stitch in. In a super chunky yarn, I might pick up in the center of the outermost stitch to reduce the bulky of the seam. But Deluxe Chunky isn’t too heavy, so I’m going one stitch in as usual.

Insert your needle into the space between those first two stitches. Wrap yarn around the needle,

And pull through.

Here we are with a few picked up stitches on the needle.

And with the first 21 stitches on the needle. My markers make it easy to see my sections and to count back to make sure I have the right number of stitches.

Here are all the stitches on the needle:

What you can’t see here, is that I picked up an extra stitch on one half of the piece. If this happens, it’s no big deal. Just k2tog or p2tog over the next row to adjust.

And, the edging completed:

All that’s left is my other side edging, a collar, some blocking, and it’s done!

As I was sitting outside enjoying my evening the other night, I could smell the autumn in the air for the first time this year. It’s coming, people. It’s coming! How is your knitalong project coming?