Knitting charts

I am what some people call "whole brained". I am right brained enough to be creative and enjoy creative pursuits. I am talented at knitting, scrapbooking, I used to be an excellent dancer (I am long out of practice), and I can draw reasonably well (I was an art major for two years). I am not, however, the most expressive person. I have an intrinsic need to create, but I am fine following other people's instructions and don't necessarily need to generate my own designs. I'm not much for creative writing and I have little to no interest in music. I am also fairly logical and approach most things from a rather practical viewpoint. I am pretty good at technical writing and I deal well with complex instructions. I like figuring out how things work and what I need to do to fix them. I enjoy science and am perfectly capable of advanced math, even if it isn't my favorite thing to do. I do not like to dwell on things, though, and I don't spend a lot of time inside my head working out solutions to problems or contemplating every angle of every issue. So I am both right brained and left brained and when I do those tests that tell you where you fall, I fall right in the middle, just to the left. C says I am one of those people who can do a lot of different things...I can handle logical, technical tasks, and yet can do creative pursuits and he envies that a bit. C is completely and utterly left brained. He is the poster child for the left brain community. Except for language. Language skills are considered right brain activities and he is good with language.


The disadvantage to being "whole brained" is that while I am fairly skilled in several different (sometimes contradictory) areas, I am not stellarly talented in any of them. C, however, is very talented in his left brained pursuits. He works through issues in his head with a thoroughness that exhausts me just to think about. He is ever on the side of logic and readily understands even complex theories and structures. He is always looking for the answer to something and is always working out a problem in his head. Having an argument with him is a bit like arguing with Spock.


So anyway, I think my whole-brained self has a particular love of knitting charts because from the first time I used one, I thought it was the most brilliant thing I'd seen in a long time. They never not made sense to me. And now I won't work a complex stitch pattern that doesn't have one. I choose my projects based on whether or not a chart is provided for more complex stitch patterns.


I have a few tricks for using charts. One is that if the chart shows both sides of the work, and is read from right to left and then back from left to right, I highlight the left to right lines (every other line). That way I am always reminded, by the color, which way I am reading. The photos below show a two-way chart. The less I have to think about the chart while using it, the better. I use a Knit Picks chart holder that costs just $10 and is worth its weight in gold. It stands up on its own, is not too big or bulky, comes with magnetic strips that hold the pattern in place and mark rows, and snaps closed to protect and transport the chart.


I usually set it on the arm of my sofa in my favorite knitting spot. On planes, it works great in my lap until I can lower the tray table and then it goes there. I have balanced this thing in lots of situations and it works great. It has two different angle settings, so it can stand up more or less depending on how you snap it.


This is a photo of my chart in action.





This is a close up of the chart in use, after I have prepped it. I am only doing one repeat of a two repeat chart, so I placed one marker vertically to the right of the portion I am using and I placed a small marker diagonally over the portion I am ignoring.




This an even closer view of the section I am using.


I sometimes work with the row marker below the line I am working on, as I am here. There are times that I have placed the marker above the line I am working on...especially when I am working something really big and/or complex and want to be able to read the knitting I have already worked. In this photo, I have just finished row 9. I only move the marker up to the next row when I am just about to begin it.


On charts where there are groupings of the same stitch in a row (8 purls or 6 knit stitches or something like that), I write in the first box the number of stitches. You can see that on the photo. The 5 written on row 9 (which is read from right to left) means 5 knit stitches. I usually write the stitch count if there are 5 or more of a particular stitch because that's my limit. My brain usually needs to count the stitches individually if there are more than four of them in a row. Your mileage may vary. On row 6, which is read from left to right, the 8 is in the first purl box and means 8 consecutive purl stitches. That way I don't have to keep counting every time I get to that row. On large patterns where a large stitch count changes constantly, I write the expected stitch count next to every row.


I draw bold or red lines to designate pattern repeats...sometimes the chart maker does this...sometimes they don't print off so well. I marked the red line one in from the edge of the pattern because when I first tried this pattern, I used both repeats and the last column on the left is actually outside the last repeat.

I also like to distinguish between left-leaning and right leaning decreases if there are a lot of them close together. Here, I marked the left leaning SSK decreases with red pen over the print out. This makes it easier for me to see that this is a SSK and not a K2tog without thinking. I've worked charts enough to automatically think of a / as K2tog and a \ as one of the left leaning decreases, but the red pen keeps my eyes from being tricked since there are so many symbols in there together. In charts where there are tons of very different stitches that have similar symbols, I use different colored pens or pencils to help mark them so that I'm not squinting to see exactly which symbol to use. I also enlarge charts to where I can read them more comfortably if they are tiny, as many of them are.

Prepping the chart with my own markings can take time with a large chart, but it is worth it because it helps my brain read across the lines faster without as much thinking involved. Less thinking, faster knitting.

I like knitting lace. It moves along quickly (all those holes seem to make the work grow faster) and even a simple lace pattern can hold my knitting interest. I can also work simple lace while watching TV.

I bought a sweater pattern a couple of years ago for C's sweater and it was an Aran-style cabled sweater. I didn't fully realize the implications of not having a chart to work from until I really looked at the pattern. I have since boycotted Sirdar patterns until someone there learns to produce a chart. I could do it myself, but I'm not that in love with the sweater. If you are a pattern-writer, I hope that you are also producing charts along with the written instructions. For some of us, they are deal breakers when deciding which patterns to knit. I know there are some knitters who really struggle with chart reading and prefer written instructions. I think, though, that most folks can modify a chart to work for them based on how their brain works.