When my oldest child was about two years old, my mother-in-law taught me how to knit. That was almost 17 years ago. My mother-in-law is no longer with us, and my daughter will be starting college in just over a week. So much has changed in those 17 years, including my knowledge of, ability to do, and love for the wonderful skill my mother-in-law passed on to me all those years ago. What a gift that was!
At first, naturally I had no knowledge of how to knit. I had the ability but without the knowledge, that did me no good. And of course you can't really love something that you don't know, so I had no love for the skill of knitting.
Over the years, this has changed dramatically, and for the better I might add as well! I've knitted so many things, I can't even begin to tell you. Everything I have knitted, I have thoroughly enjoyed making. Some things were for my children, but most were for gifts. One of the items I loved making both for my children and for gifts is sweaters, and after making quite a few, I've come up with a few tricks that have helped me along the way. One of those tricks is how to keep track of decrease rows in a knit pattern, such as you would need to do when knitting the sleeve of a sweater or a stocking cap for instance.
Let me share with you my method of keeping track of decrease rows on a sweater pattern.
Sticky notes are a wonderful tool for jotting down information and for marking your place on a pattern. You can write on it and you can move it along as you move along in the pattern. At the point where this note is on this sweater pattern, the instruction says to repeat rows 2 and 3 three times. Not being a fast knitter, I could never do that much knitting in one sitting and would surely forget where I left off if I did not make some kind of notation to remind me. So I write on my sticky note as you see in the above picture.
To prevent the need to keep referring back to the pattern, I might also note what to do on each row. In this case, on the #2 rows I would decrease and on the #3 rows I would purl.
Then as I finish each row, I simply cross it off. This way if I have to put down my knitting for a minute, an hour, or a few days even, I will know exactly where I left off when I come back to it. When I have crossed off that last noted row, it's time to move on to the next instruction in the pattern.
At some point further in the pattern, I come across another instruction that seems a bit complicated at first. But if you break it down and write it down, it becomes quite easy to manage. For this pattern, the instruction says to decrease one stitch at each edge every 4 rows for the size I am making, and to do this 7 more times from this point in the pattern. And then I am to decrease every 2 rows 2 times.
I write out my row numbers starting with number 1, in groups of 4 since I will be decreasing every 4 rows to begin with. At each 4th row, I make the note to decrease. I write 7 groups of 4's because I have to do this instruction 7 more times.
Then I write the next 4 row numbers with the decrease note on the second and fourth row, as the instruction says to decrease every 2 rows 2 times.
As I finish each row, I cross it off on my sticky note. When I have crossed off all the row numbers, it's time to move on to the next instruction in the pattern.
As you knit different types of patterns, you will inevitably run into instructions such as these examples. They may seem intimidating at first, but if you break them down into sections and write simple notations as I have done here, you will find following these directions much simpler than you ever expected. So now there is no need to shy away from patterns with decreases or other instructions that need to be done every so many rows. Just make notes and cross them off as you go. Even the most complex knitting pattern is worked just one row at a time, and you can do it!
Happy Stitching!
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Labels: decrease, helpful hints, knit hints
