Cables on a Chart
Cables are not always charted, but when they are it makes working the project much easier since, as I’ve said before, charts are visual. Working cables can be intimidating at first, but once you work a few you realize that all that is involved is working a few stitches out of order. The only hard part is remembering if that first set of stitches is supposed to be held to the front or to the back.
When you’re working from written directions it is typically written out exactly what to do. But on a chart you have to look at the cable symbol, then check the key, and finally work your cable. Some patterns have multiple types of twists (Trellis, for example, has six!) and it can be frustrating to go back and forth from chart to key every time you come to a cable, since of course you want to make sure you’re doing it right.
But when you learn to really look at the chart, you won’t need the key! Take a look at this cable in Keri Williams Jeanie pattern.
I’ve added the pink arrows to make it clear that the first four stitches you will come to (remember, we’re working from right to left!) need to go behind the second set of four stitches. This means that you will hold those four stitches to the back, work the next four, then work the first set of four from the cable needle.
You can see that by trusting the chart, and looking carefully at where the stitches are meant to go, you can start zipping along rather than stopping to read the written out instructions every time you come to a cable. Just one more way that the visual nature of charts makes your knitting easier and faster!
Lace Charts
Lace is probably charted more than any other type of knitting, and for good reason. Charts allow you to have a large amount of information in a small space. The variety of types of lace out there make it impossible to generalize about lace charts. There are a few good guidelines to make sure you avoid common mistakes.
First of all, read the key and make sure you know how to work the various types of increases and decreases that you will be using, and try to understand why each symbol represents each item. An open circle typically represents a yarn over, since that increase creates a small hole in your knitting. K2tog is often represented by a forward slash (/) because it is a right leaning decrease. SSK, however, leans left, and so it is often represented by a backslash (\). Understanding little tricks like this will allow you to move along in your knitting rather than checking the key every time you come upon a special stitch.
The absolute most important thing to look for when knitting lace, however, is the numbers along the side of the chart. Remember that items worked flat have numbers bouncing back and forth from right side to left side, while items worked in the round have all the rows numbered up the right side. Lace adds another wrinkle to this issue.
It is common for lace patterns to have all the “fussy” stitches done every other row, leaving the rows in between to be worked “plain”, typically just purled straight across. If this is the case, the chart only shows the rows that have increases and decreases worked. The plain rows are simply not there.
Lankakomero’s Frost Flowers Top has a chart that shows what this looks like. (Yes, this chart has other languages on it, but it has English too. It’s okay.)
Notice that the rows are only numbered up the right side. But there are only odd numbers — 1, 3, 5…. Where are rows 2, 4 and 6? They are worked plain, in this case, purled.
Every now and then you will hear of a beginning knitter who tackled her first lace project, only to end up a jumbled mess that was way too small. She didn’t work the wrong side rows plain, and so all those carefully planned increases and decreases didn’t match up, and if you skip every other row of the pattern you’re going to end up with a very short scarf!
Be sure to read the pattern, and always look at those row numbers. If some rows aren’t numbered, figure out why before you start knitting, and remember to work those rows even though they aren’t in the chart. Think of the rows worked plain as a little vacation for your brain before you have to concentrate on the chart again
“No Stitch”
It is not uncommon to see a grey box on a chart that is keyed with the text, “no stitch”. This can be quite confusing until you realize what it means.
Before I get into that, let’s tackle the myth that each box on a chart represents one stitch. That’s just not true. Let me explain why:
If your entire chart is all knits and purls with no shaping, then every box does represent a stitch. But many charts include some sort of shaping or fancy stitches. And this can mess with the stitch count on each row. Think about a simple decrease: k2tog. As you work a k2tog, you use up two stitches from the left needle and produce one stitch on the right needle. So does that count as one stitch or two? Or consider the most common increase in lace: the yarn over. This doesn’t use any stitches from the left hand needle, but it does produce one on the right hand needle. Does that count as a stitch?
Until you start designing your own charts, don’t worry about those questions. Just know that the convention is that every action that you take, be it an increase, decrease, or even a bobble, takes up one box on your chart. But since some of those actions take up or produce more than one loop on your needle, the number of stitches from row to row doesn’t always add up. This fact, along with various shaping and other issues, can result in some rows in your chart that need more boxes than other rows.
To allow for this fact, sometimes a box is inserted into the chart that has no meaning. It isn’t meant to be knit, slipped, or worked in any way. It’s not an action. The box is simply a place holder to make sure all the other boxes line up properly. So when you come to a “no stitch” box, just ignore it and move right along to the next box that does have an action for you.
I love this example: MJ’s Liesel chart tells you just what to do with those shaded in boxes. Just ignore it!
Knitting Charts 101
Knitting Charts 102
Knitting Charts 201
Knitting Charts 202
