Tutorial - Shaping while keeping the pattern correct

In today's tutorial I'm going to talk about how to keep the pattern correct while shaping at the edge of the fabric. I'm talking specifically about lace patterns here but these principles apply to other stitch patterns as well. Lace patterns are a little bit different because of the yarn overs (yarn forward, yarn over the needle, yarn round the needle) which are increases and decreases. 

In lace patterns each yarn over has a corresponding decrease. Sometimes this decrease is right next to the yarn over and sometimes it's several stitches away or on a later row.  If the yarn over is further away from the decrease it makes working out how to keep the pattern correct more difficult.

In this tutorial I've used a very simple lace pattern. It is much easier to work out how to keep the pattern correct if you can read charts because you have a visual representation of what your knitting looks like and you can expand the pattern repeat which is what I've done in the charts below. The easiest way to do this is to get some squared paper and copy the lace pattern on the squared paper and then expand it horizontally.

Below are the charts I use in the video.

Abbreviations:

k2tog - knit two stitches together

m1 – increase one stitch by lifting the strand between two stitches & placing the loop on the left hand needle, knit this loop through the back loop

p2tog - purl two stitches together

p2tog tbl - purl two stitches together through back loop

RS – right side

sk2po – slip one stitch knitwise, k2tog, pass slipped stitch over

ssk - slip one stitch knitwise, slip next stitch knitwise, insert left needle into front of both stitches and knit together

ssp - slip one stitch knitwise, slip next stitch knitwise, pass stitches back to left hand needle and purl through the back loop

WS – wrong side

yo - yarn over/yarn forward

Chart A:

 Chart B:

Chart C:

In the example below, the yarn overs and decreases are not symmetrical. As you can see the decreases are at the beginning of rows 1 and 3 and the yarn overs are afterwards. So you have two decreases followed by two increases (yarn overs). This is more difficult to deal with when it comes to keeping the pattern correct while shaping.  In this example I would take away a complete repeat at the beginning and end of the row. Use markers to section off where you'll be working the repeat and where you'll be working in stocking stitch.

If you have any questions, please ask them under the You Tube video for this tutorial rather than here on the blog as it's easier for me to answer on You Tube.

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