Entrelac diagrams

For the last year, I've been experimenting with entrelac knitting. I find diagrams to be a good way to think about and explore entrelac knitting.

In this post, I'll show how to read my diagrams, assuming you already know how to do entrelac. I'll start with the simplest diagram and build from there.

Here's the minimal diagram to describe a piece of knitting:

The line inside the rectangle represents the grain of knitting. It's sometimes hard to tell the beginning edge from the ending edge of a piece of knitting—especially if the piece was cast off with a sewn cast-off—but with a flat piece, you can always tell which edges are selvedges.

These two diagram elements, rectangle and line, are enough to show the gist of an example of entrelac knitting:

The basic technique of entrelac is to join pieces of knitting end-to-side and side-to-end.

Looking at knitting, especially if it's stockinette, garter, or reverse stockinette, it's not always easy to see the direction of knitting. With entrelac, you're joining many little pieces of knitting as you go, so it's important to keep track of the direction of knitting. I use an arrow to show the direction:

Another thing to keep track of is which side the knitting starts and ends on. I use dots to show this. The diagram below shows a piece of stockinette knitting that starts and ends on a right-side row (when it's knit in the conventional direction):

The one below starts on a wrong-side row and ends on a right-side row:

Now I'll show an entrelac diagram with dots and arrows:

This is the minimal diagram to show how an entrelac piece is knitted. I suppose the dots can be inferred from the arrows, but they make following the diagram a little easier.

To make it clearer, for each square I'll often add a number in place of the dot that indicates how the first row begins, like so:

From the diagram above, you can infer how to work each square:

• Start on a wrong-side and end on a wrong-side row: 1, 2, 7, 12, 13.
• Start on a wrong-side and end on a right-side row: 3, 8.
• Start on a right-side and end on a right-side row: 4, 5, 9, 10.
• Start on a right-side and end on a wrong-side row: 6, 11.

Now, all this assumes that you know how to join entrelac squares.  In a subsequent post, I'll write about different ways to join entrelac pieces.

Lace Twist-Stitch Argyle Pattern: Chart, Directions, Stitch Key

By Kind Request

One of my beloved commenters requested a stitch pattern for the "Lace Twist-Stitch 'Argyle' Pattern" (please, for the love of Pete, think of a better name). I created this pattern a while ago, and knitted it from a rough diagram whose mysterious symbols were known only to me. With this post and the accompanying PDF files (see below) I hope I've given the instructions in a shape that other people can follow.

Image by fuzzyjay via Flickr

The goal in designing this fabric was to see if I could line up the twist stitches with the yarnovers in an interesting and pleasing way, using texture to give an argyle effect that's usually given with color. (Somebody, please, make some socks from this pattern!) To get the columns of stitches to line up right, I had to do some fancy twist-stitches and twist-decreases, so I made them up. I've actually used them for other fabrics, such as the Double Lattice Pattern, which see. In addition to using twist stitches of my own unvention, of course I use idiosyncratic charting methods. (What would the world be with only five thousand charting methods?) I use only one square for the symbol for twist stitches, since to me it shows better how the stitch columns line up in the fabric. Diagramming them this way definitely made designing the fabric easier.  If it helps to keep track, the stitch key's right column shows for all of the chart symbols the number of loops used from the row before and the number of loops that result from working each symbol.

Stitch-Pattern Diagram

Close-up Fabric Photograph

Written-out Directions

Cast on a multiple of 12 stitches plus 1. Stitch count varies. Stitch abbreviations are explained in the stitch key below.

Row 1: (And all wrong-side rows.) Purl.

Row 2:LT, *k4, YO-k1b-YO, k4, LT3, repeat from *, ending last repeat with LT.

Row 4: K1, *LT, k1, k2tog, YO, sl1-k2tog-psso, YO, ssk, k1, RT, k1, repeat from* to end of row.

Row 6: K2, *LT-dec, YO, k3, YO, RT-dec, k3, repeat from *, ending last repeat with k2.

Row 8: K1, *k2tog, YO, LT, k3, RT, YO, ssk, k1, repeat from * to end of row.

Row 10: K2tog, *YO, k2, LT, k1, RT, k2, YO, sl1-k2tog-psso, repeat from *, ending last repeat with ssk.

Row 12: K1b-YO, *k4, RT3, k4, YO-k1b-YO, repeat from *, ending last repeat with YO-k1b.

Row 14: K2tog, *YO, ssk, k1, RT, k1, LT, k1, k2tog, YO, sl1-k2tog-psso, repeat from *, ending last repeat with ssk.

Row 16: K2, *YO, RT-dec, k3, LT-dec, YO, k3, repeat from *, ending last repeat with k2.

Row 18: K2, *RT, YO, ssk, k1, k2tog, YO, LT, k3, repeat from *, ending last repeat with k2.

Row 20: K1, *RT, k2, YO, sl1-k2tog-psso, YO, k2, LT, k1, repeat from * to end of row.

Repeat rows 1-20.

Stitch Symbol Key

Symbol	Stitch name/Stitch operation	Loops used from row below, loops resulting
	Yarn over (YO).	0-1
	Yarn over, knit-1-back, yarn over (YO-k1b-YO).	1-3
	Knit-1-back, yarn over (k1b-YO).	1-2
	Yarn over, knit-1-back (YO-k1b).	1-2
	Knit 1 (k1).	1-1
	Knit 2 together (k2tog).	2-1
	Slip-Slip-Knit (ssk): Slip 2 as if to knit, insert left needle into front of stitches just slipped, and knit the 2 stitches together.	2-1
	Slip 1 as if to knit, knit 2-together, pass slipped stitch over the stitch just made (sl1-k2tog-psso).	3-1
	Right Twist (RT): Knit 2-together, then knit again into the first stitch on the left needle before withdrawing left needle.	2-2
	Left Twist (LT): Slip 2 as if to knit, return to left needle, Knit 1-back into 2nd stitch from end of left needle, then Knit 2-together through back loops before withdrawing left needle.	2-2
	Right 3-3 Twist (RT3): Slip 2 as if to knit, then transfer back to left needle by inserting left needle from right to left into both stitches at once and withdrawing the right needle. (Counting from the end of the left needle, the stitch order was 1-2-3, and now it's 2-1-3.) Knit 3 together, yarn over, knit 2 together before withdrawing left needle.	3-3
	Left 3-3 Twist (LT3): Slip 1 as if to knit, slip 2 as if to knit 2-together. Return the 3 stitches to the left needle, then knit 2-together through the back loops of the 2nd and 3rd stitches on the left needle, yarn over, then knit 3 together through the back loops of all three stitches before withdrawing left needle.	3-3
	Right-Twist Decrease (RT-dec): Slip 2 as if to knit, then transfer back to left needle by inserting left needle from right to left into both stitches at once and withdrawing the right needle. (Counting from the end of the left needle, the stitch order was 1-2-3, and now it's 2-1-3.) Knit 3 together, then knit 2 together before withdrawing left needle.	3-2
	Left Twist Decrease (LT-dec): Slip 1 as if to knit, slip 2 as if to knit 2-together. Return the 3 stitches to the left needle, then knit 2 together through the back loops of the 2nd and 3rd stitches on the left needle, then knit 3-together through the back loops of all three stitches before withdrawing left needle.	3-2

PDF is a nice format. I like it.

If you'd like to preview the PDF file (better by far than this web page for printing), follow this link to view a preview on my Posterous blog. And if you'd like to skip a step and directly download the PDF file to look at or print, just download the PDF with diagram, instructions and stitch symbol key to "Lace and Twist-Stitch 'Argyle' pattern." (97k)  If you do make anything out of this, I would love to see it. So far, I've made only swatches.

Speaking of exotic charting methods

I've got a million of them. Here's one I posted before. Stop me if you've seen these:

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Double-increase variations

There’s a double increase that’s commonly created by “knit-one-yarnover-knit-one-in the same stitch.”
If you diagram it without indicating the way the threads cross, it looks like this.

Without showing how the threads cross, it’s not clear what structure is being created. So, I thought, what are the possible ways to pull three loops through another loop? I have found three essentially different ways (that don't involve twisting the original loop). Two of them have a reverse side that looks different.
1. First is the knit-one-yarnover-knit-one that’s familiar:

You can create this same structure by performing a purl-one-yarnover-purl-one on a reverse-side row.
2. Another is knit-one-yarnover-purl-one. This is a completely reversible structure. It looks the same and is created the same way on both sides of the fabric:

If you do purl-one-yarnover-knit-one, you get the mirror image of the diagram above.
3. A new (?) one is what I tentatively call a knit-squared. You pull a loop through a loop towards you as in knitting, and while keeping the “legs” of the new loop as separate loops, pull the head of the new loop through the old loop towards you again. I am not sure how to efficiently produce it in hand knitting, but the structure is like this:

These are the three different structures (I don’t count the reverse sides of this as different) I’ve found to “disambiguate” the first diagram.

knitted entrelac triangular prism diagram

knitted entrelac triangular prism diagram, originally uploaded by fuzzyjay.

I'm glad I found this, it's a way to diagram the method of knitting a 3-d entrelac object, in this case a triangular prism. Not quite ready for prime-time, but it gives the idea. Each square represents a knitted square in the final piece.
Each square has a number showing the order it's knitted in. The diagonal arrow show the path the yarn takes into and out of the square.
Each square in the diagram is surrounded by other squares representing knitted squares that already exist (the number is not in parentheses, and it's a lower number) or squares that will be knitted later. The orthogonal arrows show the direction of knitting for each square except for the one you're currently knitting, which you're knitting from bottom to top.
To start each square, you'll either be knitting onto a scrap-yarn provisional cast-on (P. C. O), for example in squares 1, 2, 4, or picking up stitches from the sides of other squares. Picking up stitches is represented by little hatch marks inside the square you're working on.
And for every square after the first square, you'll also be attaching a side of the current square to the live stitches of one square that came before. This is denoted with little hatch marks that go along one of the sides of the square you're working on, but the hatch marks are outside the square. This is done in typical entrelac fashion, by working the first or last stich of a row together with one of the live stitches from another square.
Occasionally, and this is to be avoided whenever possible, you have to attach the live stitches of the square you just knitted to the side of another square previously knitted. This is indicated by a wavy line above the top of the square you just knit. The only way I've figured out how to do this short of grafting is to hold one live stitch available from the previously knitted square. You'll see this with a notation "leave loose." If that stitch is a live stitch when the time comes to attach the later square, you can ladder down that edge stitch and chain it up again, attaching the live stitches as you go.