“keeping pattern correct”

I was interested to read, in the comments, that several of you enjoy what we might call “challenging” knitting as a productive counterpoint to an equally challenging news cycle. I am right there with you on that score, and I thought you might be interested to hear about my approach to one of my own favourite knitterly challenges: that is, of keeping an allover colourwork pattern “correct”.

To explain: on garments with allover colourwork like Clanjamfrie . . .

. . . or the OA . . .

. . . there comes a point in the pattern where you have to work several different sections while keeping the colourwork pattern separately correct and integrating the shaping (worked as raglan decreases) over the upper body.

In the case of Clanjamfrie, this is much more straightforward than you might think:

This simple pattern repeats over six stitches and eleven rows, four of which are “plain.” Of those other seven rows, three are worked in a simple 1×1 rhythm, while four rows are used to create the pattern’s defining “dot.” When you look at the dot closely you’ll see that, in every row, each stretch of four stitches in one shade is always followed by two in the other. This means, then, that in this eleven row motif, there are actually just three rows to memorise: a row of plain knitting; a row where the background and contrast shades alternate; and a row where a four will always be followed by a two.

Clanjamfrie begins by working the body and by the time that you’ve reached the underarms, the simple rhythms of these rows are so completely ingrained in your knitterly brain that integrating the raglan decreases while “keeping pattern correct” is plain sailing.

I specifically designed Clanjamfrie to be much easier than it looks: worked in a solid colour, the hood is straightforward to knit and very easy to shape into that nice, rounded “hoody” shape. And while the braids (which match the barber’s pole effect of the 1×1 rows and raglan decreases) might look daunting at first glance, they are just one of those knitterly things where you follow the instructions and end up very pleasantly surprised at the results.

With a colourwork motif repeating over eighteen stitches and eighteen rows, the Oa presents a much more challenging proposition . . .

. . . but a chart like this is just as possible to internalise as the simple near-stripey rows of Clanjamfrie if you focus on its rhythms. I will illustrate how I go about this with an allover motif I’ve created for a design I’m working on right now, not a hoody this time, but a v-necked sweater – which creates an additional challenge, because there are five sections (two fronts, two sleeves, and the back) to keep “separately correct”. The design is different from the Oa, then, but like it, the chart I’m using here is a square, tesselating motif, with four fold rotational symmetry and strong diagonals. Let me show you exactly what I mean:

The motif is square: it has 28 stitches and 28 rows

The motif tesselates: when you repeat it, above and below, it slots together, like tiles.

This tesselating structure is incredibly regular, as well as incredibly easy to visualise, and such ease of visualisation is always a useful knitterly aide memoire because you can always look at your knitting and generally see, quite quickly, where you are, or where you might have gone wrong.

Another thing that helps with knitterly visualisation is the motif’s strong diagonals

These diagonal lines move across the pattern like a marker: as you knit, their regular occurrence (moving inward or outward by one stitch on every row) will really help you stay on track.

Finally, you are going to be helped in memorising the pattern by its four fold rotational symmetry: that is, by the way that this motif, if it were printed on a piece of paper, could be folded in half along four different lines (or axes), with each half ending up an exact reflection of the other.

Thus:

Another way of putting it is that these reflective axes effectively divide the motif into eight separate segments, which, in terms of the stitches and blocks of colour of which they are composed, are exactly the same. But why might any of this be of interest to you, the pattern-internalising knitter? Well, those eight segments effectively correspond to the number of rows you need to memorise.

Eight rows? Really? Yes! Let’s take a look.

Rotational symmetry allows this motif to work as a series of reflections: the top half mirrors the bottom half, the left the right, and so on. In practical terms, what this means for you is that the rows, too, are effectively mirrored. The rows reflect within themselves and between themselves as their fourfold structures and rhythms match up across the motif.

Let’s take rows 4, 10, 18 and 24 as an example:

As you can see, this row works by building parts of the motif with reflecting blocks of one, two and three stitches in the contrast colour, and a long stretch of seven stitches worked between the diagonals in the background shade. Rows 4, 10, 18 and 24, then, are actually one single row, not four different rows. But are other rows really matched up similarly? Are there really only eight rows to memorise? Yes! Here they are:

1 Rows 1, 13, 15, 27

2 Rows 2, 12, 16, 26

3 Rows 3, 11, 17, 25

4 Rows 4, 10, 18, 24

5 Rows 5, 9, 19, 23

6 Rows 6, 8, 20, 22 

7 Rows 7 & 21

8 Rows 14 & 28 

That’s all very well, but how do you go about memorising these eight rows?

It’s important to find a method that works for you, but I personally find it very useful to devise mnemonics for internalising stitch rhythms. In the case we just looked at (of rows 4, 10, 18 and 24) I found I could easily remember the rhythm just by counting up and down (1, 2, 3; 3, 2, 1). The rhythms of other rows are more irregular, and more tricky, but giving a difficult row its own name immediately helps me to recall it. In this case, I named rows 6, 8, 20, and 22 “the bear” (because I found these rows the most difficult to remember) and rows 7 and 21 “the wrong trousers” (because at that point in the knitting, the motif looks a bit like a pair of pants). The more ridiculous the name, the more memorable it is. At least that’s how it works in my own case.

Everyone is different, and I’m sure you’ll all have your own pattern-memorising system that works for you (I’d be very interested to hear about this in the comments). But whatever your method, my general point holds: memorising all the rows of an apparently large motif can be much easier than you think because of the way that these rows reflect and repeat themselves. In this case, you are helped by the motif’s tessellating structure, its strong diagonals, its regular rotational symmetry, and by the fact that eight rows are much easier to remember than twenty-eight.

Once you have your rows internalised and memorised, you will inevitably find that the structure of the motif becomes much more intuitive. With each row fixed in your mind while working the shaping, you can immediately “see” where you are in each separate section, and know what’s coming next.

“Keeping pattern correct” is definitely a challenge, then, but I find it a fun one. Do you have different ways of memorising and internalising stitch patterns while you knit? Do tell me about them!