Checking out Stitch Maps

June 26, 2013 by Sarah White 2 Comments

If you were around the knitting Internet (yes, there is such a place) at the end of last week or over the weekend you may have already heard about Stitch Maps, a new project by knitting chart enthusiast J. C. Briar. Briar’s book (which I have read but somehow failed to actually review) Charts Made Simple is a really good book for teaching how to use knitting charts of all sorts.

Briar is clearly a visual thinker and knitter, and she has taken visual representations of knitting even further with her latest project.

If you look at that picture up there, which is a version of Feather and Fan, you might think that it looks like a crochet chart. And it does. Crochet charts have always been a more literal visual representation of the work, because it’s difficult to symbolize the difference between, say, a double crochet and a half-double crochet any other way.

But knitting charts have always been flat, I guess because stockinette stitch is flat, or because whoever started charting knitting didn’t think to make the chart look like knitting.

J. C. Briar did. And the result is a little jarring if you’re a knitter, but still pretty darn cool. And it’s actually really logical, because the map can show, for instance, the curving of the Feather and Fan pattern, and how two stitches from the previous row come together in a knit 2 together on this row.

I don’t know if this sort of stitch mapping will catch on, because it also takes up a lot more space in print, and I imagine it might be difficult to represent different sizes of garments on the same chart. But for simply charting out stitch patterns, it’s very cool and I look forward to playing with it some more.

What do you think about stitch maps as opposed to more traditional knitting charts? Would you ever knit from one?

[Photo via Stitch Maps.]

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Stitch a Scarf with Dreamy Waves

As I write this, it’s probably time to start thinking about winter knitting if you haven’t already. And it’s definitely time to think about gift knitting if you have any of that you plan to do for the holidays.

The Dreamy Waves Scarf from Knit Picks, designed by Stacey Winklepleck, would be a great project to go in either category.

It uses two different multicolored yarns and a simple repeating wave pattern to make a project that looks a lot more complicated and dramatic than it is. The gradient look happens naturally just by switching which yarn you’re knitting with.

This pattern uses worsted weight yarn so it’s a pretty quick project even though a scarf is large and this one is pretty wide. It measures 8.5 inches (21.5 cm) wide and 63 inches or 120 cm long. Of course you can make it longer or shorter as you like. As written it takes one ball of each color so it’s a pretty economical project, too.

It’s rated for intermediate knitters but if you know how to do various increases and decreases you’ll be all set. The pattern uses knit 2 together, make 1 left and right, centered double decrease and slip slip knit. All of the stitches are explained in a glossary in the pattern so even if you haven’t done all of them it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.

The pattern also includes tons of options for different colorways in yarn that Knit Picks sells, so you can see how different combinations knit up before you buy the yarn. That’s such a great idea!

Of course if you already have two multicolored yarns with long color runs on hand, you can absolutely use them, too. It might also be fun, but would give you a totally different look, to use a solid color and a bunch of scraps or one multicolored yarn to see how the different colors play together. So many options!

You can grab this free pattern and check out all the color options at Knit Picks.

[Photo: Knit Picks]

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