A Closer Look at Knitting Charts

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here and there are already many great resources available for reading knitting charts. Two of my favorites for covering the basics and beyond are from Knotions and Tin Can Knits. Here are links to both: https://knotions.com/knoted/tutorial-read-knitting-chart/  and https://blog.tincanknits.com/2014/06/06/how-to-read-a-knitting-chart/

Or this video is a very clear look at beginning chart reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytbcX5R6G98

For a more in depth look at reading charts I also like this from Brooklyn Tweed: https://www.brooklyntweed.com/reading-charts/

Instead of hashing back over things that many others have already presented really well, in this post I want to offer some quick examples of charts from some of my designs. Basically a knitting chart gives you a visual or graphic representation of written instructions telling you how to work the stitches in your pattern.

Here below are examples of some of the cables used in my designs with each of the sample knits shown next to their charts. From this you can start to see how a chart mimics the fabric (or the knitting mimics the chart if you prefer it that way).

 

 

In each of the above samples, the chart is shown next to the cable or cables it “describes”. And if you pull back a bit and let your eyes fuzz, many knitters can almost see the way the knit fabric will look by imagining the knit stitches as the white squares of the chart and the the purl stitches as the dark squares (usually denoted by a dot or a dash and sometimes shaded grey depending on designer preferences or charting software).

And now below is a second look at the side-by-side of the cable shown next to the chart that represents it, this time with directional arrows added. The first two examples I’ve only added lines to the chart since they are basic cables. I added lines to the knitting of the the third example since it is a braid which makes it slightly harder to see.

 

 

 

I intentionally did not include lace charts in the above samples because reading lace charts (even while squinting to blur things a bit) is not as intuitive to me as reading cable charts. I work from lace charts instead of written directions almost exclusively because it is faster to translate the picture of a stitch to the motion of my fingers while knitting, but I’ll be honest that the first time or two through a lace chart I have to simply trust the magic instead of intuitively understanding how the fabric will look. I am absolutely certain there are knitters out there for whom the complete opposite is true so I’m including a couple of knit lace samples here below next to their charts just in case you are one of those people and these next two side-by-side samples give you the moment of clarity you need to see how it all pulls together.

 

 

For my designs the lace or cable is almost always written and charted so that knitters can pick to follow whichever directions are more intuitive for them. If space allows, I’ll even include the written directions next to the chart for added clarity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Designing: Japanese Knitting Stitch Bible

 

I purchased this book in April of 2018. I under enough deadlines when it arrived that I placed it on my bookshelf without much more than a glance. Just recently I’ve had the time and mental space to pull it out again and really look through it.

Now that I’ve had a chance to really look, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book!! You know how the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes after he sees something he hadn’t even considered before? Well, I’m pretty sure my brain grew three sizes after looking through this book.

I spent hours pouring over this book after I opened it. I kept stopping my mathematically minded sons and husband as they walked past my desk to show them the charts and symbols. I tried explaining to them how the new way of visually representing the stitches with different notations and having no words at all on page after page felt so liberating and amazing. They were not properly impressed.

Many of the stitch patterns in the book are not completely new to me. I own at least 9 other stitch dictionaries and I pour over most of them every time I sit down to start building responses to submission calls. So I hold a lot of different stitch possibilities in my mind. But even the ones that feel somewhat familiar aren’t quite the same – the stitches are twisted to help them pop of the background better or the cables are smaller or the simply the “normal” way of representing the stitches is just different enough that it sparks my brain in a way that I haven’t felt for ages.

I’ve already got three designs on the needles and a line of others percolating in my mental queue inspired by ideas I saw in this book. Plus I can’t wait to try some of the things in there that caught my attention even if they’ll never end up as a design.

Also, turns out this is actually Hitomi Shida’s second stitch dictionary! Her first collection of 250 knitting stitches is being re-released later this year in English for the first time. So now I’m wondering, can I wait that long? Do I just want to try to pick up an older copy of the original in what they call “simplified Chinese”? Or do I need to study side by side? I haven’t decided yet. But I do know that I’ll be picking up one or both versions of it before the end of the year.