Knitting Charts 101

Jack's How-to Guide: Reading Knitting Charts

Do not be fooled by knitting charts. They are out to confuse you. Like any good magic show, most things on the pattern that you are likely to be working with are not as they seem. A few good examples from my own escapades in working knitting charts:

1. "A dot is a dot is a dot"- many charts will use solid dots and empty squares to indicate "knits" and "purls." But beware that if a dot on the RS indicates a "purl," it does NOT indicate a purl on the WS. On the WS, a dot is a "knit." Very tricky, I say.

2. "Knitting charts are bilingual"- Reading knittinh charts is not like reading English. Nor is it like reading Arabic. It is like reading English and Arabic at the same time. What's important here is to see that the chart you are using should be an exact copy of whatever is hanging off of your needles. To create this effect, read the RS rows as you would Arabic (starting from the right). Read the WS rows as you would English (starting from the left). You know you've got it right when your eyes move, not like a type writer, but like a snake, winding back and forth over the chart (just be sure you are winding in the right direction).

3. "Look before you leap"-most knitting charts don't include selvedge stitches (ie. the knit stitches that bookend the each row to keep the edges straight and clean). Its helpful to write these knits into your pattern. If you don't it's easy to forget they're there and jump right into the pattern, mistakenly.

4. "Just do it"-mistakes are inevitable, especially with nasty, hard charts. But stick too it; keep going; it's not worth reworking the same three rows over and over again and letting one misstich stop you. The odds are, no one will notice anyways, and patterns only become fun once you truly get going.

That said, discovering knitting patterns, bashing my head against one for hours on a long Sunday, and then conquering it late into the evening, opened up a whole new knitty world. Patterns complete the picture; you can finally see what stitches make what designs. And once you learn how to read patterns, not only can you knit them, being to see how you can create your own designs. Get knitting, you nazy critters!!