Lost in translation – written and charted patterns

To a new knitter or crocheter, charts have a slightly hieroglyphic quality, full of beautiful symbols and patterns, but mysterious in meaning. Before too long though, you realize that charts are incredibly functional and a fantastic way for expressing an enormous amount of information in an elegant graphical format.

Another great quality of charts is that they give you a preview of your project and the relationships between the stitches of each row. With a chart, you can easily check if your decrease is two or three stitches to the left from the YO on the row below. Charts make it easy to count groups of stitches at an instant and make sure your stitches are all accounted for.

In this post, I want to look at a significant difference between written-out and charted lace patterns.  Let me illustrate. Here is part of a chart for a lace shawl from the pattern booklet of a well-known designer:

To orient you, this is one half of a triangular shawl knit back and forth with one stitch increased every row on the edges, and every RS row in the middle middle. These stitches are added with YOs (see the red stitches in the chart below).

Typically, the increase stitches become incorporated into a pattern repeat on subsequent rows.

However, this chart has a problem. The problem lies in the green box. The green box means “keep repeating the pattern contained within the box until you reach a point where there are only x number of stitches left until a landmark”. In our case, the landmark is the central pattern-invariant stitch in the middle of the shawl, but the landmark could be an edge or some other element of the pattern.

To make the knitting easier, you would conventionally put a stitch marker at each end of the repeat pattern sections. When you get to the stitch marker, you start the repeat section, then you don’t have to look at the chart again until you reach the next stitch marker.

To make this clear, see the diagram below where I’ve indicated the stitch marker placement (which happens on row 1).

Now this is where our chart starts to have problems. The first 2 rows are finished and then we get ready for the RS row 3.

Row 3 begins with YO (the increase YO), K2, YO S1, K2tog PSSO (a triple decrease) and then the repeat section begins. For clarity, I’ve circled this section in orange in the diagram below.

This section or row 3 consumes 5 stitches. BUT…. at the end of row 2, we only have 4 stitches after our stitch marker (circled in pink).

At the other end, this chart has a similar problem, one too many stitches.

So what do we do? Do we move our stitch marker one stitch over each row?

If we did this, we would solve the problem of having sufficient stitches on each row to take the pattern repeat into account.

But shifting stitch markers is not a good solution, in fact it would be a terrible solution because moving stitch markers is a pain and would negate the advantage of using the stitch marker in the first place.

So what is the solution?

All we do is move the pattern repeat box to its logical position. The dotted green line indicates the position of of the pattern repeat box on the original chart, the solid green line indicates its new position.

This is now the corrected chart and this chart makes it easy to execute the pattern; you can insert stitch markers on row 1, they act as constant guides and you can continue on your merry way.

The chart probably had this problem because it was “translated” incorrectly from written instructions.

These are the written instructions for row 3:

YO, K2, YO S1, K2tog PSSO, * K2, YO, K3, YO, S1 K2tog PSSO, rep from * to 9 sts before center stitch K2, YO, K3, YO, SSK, K2, YO

To translate the written instructions into a chart, the technical editor of this pattern just substituted a pattern repeat box at the same position as the asterisk in the written instructions. Although the pattern was still accurate, this was confusing because, as we have discussed, the pattern repeat box on the chart needs to be positioned differently for maximum utility.

So what? Am I just being persnickety?

The reason it’s important to be aware of this issue is because many gorgeous patterns of yesteryear are written-out and part of the updating process involves translating them into charts. Also, many people still use written instructions and a competent technical pattern editor should be able to write up a pattern for both audiences to maximize the pattern’s adoption potential.

Hope this makes sense, you can click on any of the images to see a bigger size.

ETA

Ugh ugh, I now realize this post has a serious error, in so much as my corrected” box with constant stitch markers does NOT work after row 5. This particular pattern with two increases n RS rows and one increase on WS rows means that the pattern WILL shift w.r.t. a stitch marker placed in a constant position. This is the problem with a blog, one thinks out loud and one’s fallibility is very visible.

Highly recommended

Terrific video on how to use lifelines in knitting and an easy, straightforward way to install one.

Remember, this is also a great way to move stitches onto a piece of string when testing garment fit mid-project. Even the most flexible cable needle won’t give you an accurate sense of how the fit is evolving. You need to take the stitches off the cable and see how the piece hangs. With this method, there’s no need to patiently thread stitches onto a tapestry needle, just knit onto a lifeline and there you have it!

On a separate, but related issue, check out Fleegle’s method for vertical lifelines. A fabulous, wonderful idea.

Upcycling and Yarn Reclamation tutorial

We are really fortunate to have SewGreen here in town which is a wonderful resource for promoting sustainable fashion. It has made me much more conscious of ways to reuse clothing. For instance, I just came across an old vinyl jacket. The material was disintegrating and shedding plastic flakes. The old me would have just thrown the entire thing in the garbage. The new me carefully cut out and saved the beautiful cotton lining fabric and used a seam ripper to save the zippers. I have no idea what I’ll do with the zippers but it feels good to rescue them from the landfill.

Here’s a tutorial for upcycling yarn:

The starting material. In this case, I am starting with an old fugly project that’s been lying around for a while. Any old knitted or crocheted item can be used for this purpose, but if you are using an old sweater, make sure that the seams are not serged (typically not the case with items made from bulkier yarn), and that the sweater has not been felted.

Next, determine the end that can be pulled on for unravelling. Secure this end to the swift.

Turn the swift to unravel and reclaim the yarn.

When the unravelling process is complete, tie up the yarn skein on the swift in at least two spots to stop it from becoming tangled when it is removed from the swift.

The yarn is now reclaimed, but it’s not ready for use because it’s kinked from holding all the stitches it’s now been liberated from.

Using the reclaimed yarn as is will result in distortion in your stitches and gauge alterations.

Here’s what you have to do to get the reclaimed yarn ready for use:

Drop the reclaimed yarn skein into some hot water. Add a little shampoo if you want to give the yarn a wash.

Give the yarn a good soak. You can tell from the picture above that the yarn was recently dropped into its bath, as there are parts of the yarn that the water has not yet penetrated into. Swish the yarn around to get rid of any trapped air pockets.

After the yarn has had a good soak, gently squeeze to get rid of excess water.

Wrap the yarn in a towel to get rid of most of the water. I find this is important as otherwise the weight of the water retained in the yarn can cause it to stretch out when hung up to dry.

Hang the yarn up to dry. I rotate the skein around the hanger a couple of times; better still would be to dry it flat (if I had the space!).

And now, the final product: smooth yarn, ready for reincarnation!