Over the weekend I was seized by the need to map a lace doily pattern and convert it to a wedge shape. (You know, because I just can’t get enough charting in my life.) I chose Coronet, from Marianne Kinzel’s First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.
The first step was converting the lingo. Kinzel uses “K.1B” for “knit 1 through back loop,” Stitch-Maps.com uses “k1 tbl;” Kinzel uses “M.2” for “knit into front and back of next st,” Stitch-Maps.com uses “(k1, p1) in next st;” blah, blah, blah. Actually, that was about it for abbreviations. Really, the most substantial substitution was using “*yadda, repeat from *” rather than “[yadda] 6 times” so that Stitch-Maps.com could draw a variable number of horizontal repeats.
Entering just a couple rounds at a time so I could catch my goofs along the way, I started building up the stitch map, paying close attention to the double yo: Kinzel could just say, “on following rows, knit into one yo and purl into the other,” but that language doesn’t fly at Stitch-Maps.com. So I carefully entered phrasing like “Round 26: *K6, p1, [k3, p1] 4 times, repeat from *.” Yeah, it was tedious, but I was liking the results:
Until I got to round 33, where Kinzel instructs the knitter to move the beginning-of-rounds stitch marker one stitch to the left. Whoops. Stitch-Maps.com doesn’t handle that sort of thing. (I’m gonna have to re-think that limitation.) So I cheated, creating two stitch maps for Coronet: one for Kinzel’s parts A and B, shown above, and another for part C:
More fun ensued, converting these stitch maps for knitting a doily in the round into a single stitch map for knitting a wedge shape flat. But that’ll wait for another blog post.
Tagged: charting, geeky, books, stitch maps.
I've stitch-mapped a few doily/tablecloth patterns. I'm working on an Erich Engeln pattern at present. It has a number of moves of the stitch marker to the left. My solution is to add a stitch before and a stitch after the repeated section. On rounds where the marker is moved I put k2tog before the repeat section and cast-on 1 after the repeat. Here it is in operation: https://stitch-maps.com/patterns/display/ee-5-part-1/ . This may not be ideal when knitting in the round, but I use the map (with two horizontal repeats) to work out how to cut out a section of the circle to make a shawl shape. I don't need to look the edge stitches of the map when knitting from it. I don't bother with mapping the k1,p1 in the double yos.
» Chris May
Chris, I thought about adding a stitch and deleting a stitch. But in the end, having two separate stitch maps appealed to me: partly because it meant deviating from the pattern less (even Kinzel charted Coronet out in sections), and partly because it meant being able to deal with smaller, more manageable stitch maps. Still, your approach works well for being able to see how one section flows into the next.
As for not mapping the k1, p1 in the double yo... more power to you! I wouldn't bother if I were sketching out a stitch map by hand. But when drawing a “real” stitch map, I feel compelled to make it “right.” Just another aspect of being a consistency freak, I guess. :-D
» JC