In Pictures:
This little post might be helpful if you need to work increases on the sides of an existing textured piece, a patterned shawl or any other project that wants to grow at the sides outwards and you don’t know how to continue working your stitch pattern or chart when adding new stitches to each side of your work.
It might get especially difficult to work armhole increases in a top-down textured sweater that needs you to follow a chart with pattern repeats and extra stitches and edge stitches (as often encountered in flat knitted patterns).
Does this description already induce a headache?
Well, lets say that you might encounter the following issues:
The whole process becomes quite easy if you visually separate your newly increased stitches with the help of removable markers until you can safely integrate them into your existing pattern repeat!
The idea is to use markers to separate the complete chart you have been following before (not only the pattern repeat itself, but the whole thing) from those increases that are worked gradually and over quite some rows, so that you can continue following the chart instructions without worrying about how to start each row, since you are increasing the needed amount of stitches on the outside of your chart.
It might get especially difficult to work armhole increases in a top-down textured sweater that needs you to follow a chart with pattern repeats and extra stitches and edge stitches (as often encountered in flat knitted patterns).
Does this description already induce a headache?
Well, lets say that you might encounter the following issues:
- How to continue working a given pattern or chart, while adding new stitches to each side and not loose the overview of your stitch pattern?
- What shall one do with all these new stitches and how can those be integrated in the motif?
The whole process becomes quite easy if you visually separate your newly increased stitches with the help of removable markers until you can safely integrate them into your existing pattern repeat!
The idea is to use markers to separate the complete chart you have been following before (not only the pattern repeat itself, but the whole thing) from those increases that are worked gradually and over quite some rows, so that you can continue following the chart instructions without worrying about how to start each row, since you are increasing the needed amount of stitches on the outside of your chart.
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So now you might wonder why in this first increase row the M1L and M1R increases are placed at the “inside” of the markers and not at the outside: It is so that those newly increased stitches can safely replace the edge stitches of the chart.
This allows you to just follow your chart as a whole and as written in between the two markers and to increase at the outer edges of the markers on the following rows:
This allows you to just follow your chart as a whole and as written in between the two markers and to increase at the outer edges of the markers on the following rows:
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Like this you can actually see how many new stitches have been added at the beginning and the end, next to the markers. These increased stitches are worked in Stocking stitch until a whole pattern repeat is added at each side (in the pictures it’s a 4 sts repeat), which we can then safely integrate into our existing textured pattern and start again with the next set of increases, where the markers are placed once again as in step 1-4.
So the whole idea is that with the help of the markers you don't bother about the increased stitches until you can add those to your growing textured section. The markers also help you to work the chart normally during the increase section (since they show you where to start and end the complete chart), so you don’t need to "read your knitting" at all and to guess which stitch goes on top of the other, if you aren’t comfortable in doing so.
While working the increased stitches next to the markers in Stocking stitch you get a wide and clean band on the sides of your work, as you can see in picture 6. If your pattern repeat is much more than 4 sts wide though, you might want to start getting comfortable with "reading your knitting" after all, so that you learn to immediately integrate the new stitches in your stitch pattern and don’t need to wait until you have enough new stitches to work with.
But that’s totally up to you, to work it as you like and feel comfortable with.
While working the increased stitches next to the markers in Stocking stitch you get a wide and clean band on the sides of your work, as you can see in picture 6. If your pattern repeat is much more than 4 sts wide though, you might want to start getting comfortable with "reading your knitting" after all, so that you learn to immediately integrate the new stitches in your stitch pattern and don’t need to wait until you have enough new stitches to work with.
But that’s totally up to you, to work it as you like and feel comfortable with.
| So, there is no reason to avoid any instructions that are asking to work complicated stitch patterns and giant charts at the same time with side increases! With the help of two little markers it'll be all done in no time... |  |
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