In double knitting, words present a problem. However, a solution called "uncoupling" allows words to read correctly from both sides.
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| Coupled (green arrows) vs. Uncoupled (blue arrows) |
Coupled stitch-partners, uncoupled stitch-partners, and the "ping pong" trick
Unless you're writing "M O M" or "O T T O," ƎӘAMI ЯOЯЯIM letters knit with coupled stitches display backwards on the fabric reverse. On the opening photo, "B I G" reads correctly on the white fabric, but not on the red fabric to left (green arrows).
Hmm. Well. If the problem is coupled stitches, then the solution is to UNcouple the stitches.
By UNcoupling the stitches, "B I G" now reads correctly on BOTH fabric faces (blue arrows).
If you think about it hard enough, it turns out that stitches need not mirror front and back. It is only by convention that each red is coupled with a white, each white with a red.
→ Nothing about the actual physical structure of double knitting requires coupling
→ This means, each color can be backed with itself
Backing a double knit stitch with another stitch of the same color is called "uncoupling" because the colors are no longer coupled together on the opposite fabric faces.
To be clear: each stitch still has a partner stitch on the opposite fabric face, but with uncoupled stitches, the opposite face partners are the same color, instead of opposite colors, as is more usual.
In classic (alternating stitch) double knitting, uncoupled stitches can certainly be worked, but oh boy! It certainly is hard to track what you're doing, and hard to wrangle the yarn not-in-use.
By comparison, using the new four-needle double knitting technique, uncoupled stitch-partners are much easier to track: the front fabric stitches are on a front needle, and the back fabric stitches are on a back needle, so it's easy to see what you're doing.
When the stitches for each fabric face lay alongside one another on the needles like this, knitting letters is like operating a dot-matrix printer. Pixel by pixel, stitch by stitch, letters are created on the needles just as they will appear in the fabric. No need to mentally edit out the intervening stitch intended for the opposite fabric face. Further, wrangling the yarn not-in-use is easy--it simply strands along in the ditch between the two left needles.
If this is your first time hearing about four-needle double knitting, in brief summary, there are two techniques to this trick: "slide-by" for knitting blocks of color, and "picking" for where colors change frequently. Those links go to videos of those techniques.
--"Slide-by," the first trick, is only ever used with coupled stitch-partners, meaning mostly on backgrounds, but sometimes where there's overlap between larger groups of stitches within words: there is more about this below. However, regardless of whether slide-by is used for backgrounds or on words, slide-by needs no modification for use in reversible word knitting: it works the same when knitting letters as when knitting any other double knitting.
--"Picking," the other trick, is the one more often used to create letters. However because we need to UNcouple stitches to work letters, the "picking" trick does have to be modified to allow for that. The UNcoupled modification of picking which is used to knit letters is called "ping-pong."
One more time, just to be clear where ping-pong picking is to be used. Leave aside the slide-by technique for the moment, and again suppose a white and red fabric. For picking, coupling vs. uncoupling yields four alternatives, per chart below.
- The left column shows "regular" picking, with its coupled (mirror image) stitch-partners.
- The right (shaded) column shows the UNcoupled alternatives, and this is where the ping-pong variant comes in.
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coupled stitch-partners worked with regular picking |
UNcoupled stitch-partners worked with ping-pong picking |
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WHITE front stitch, partnered with a RED back stitch |
WHITE front stitch partnered with a WHITE back stitch |
RED front stitch, partnered with a WHITE back stitch |
RED front stitch, partnered with a RED back stitch |
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| The yarn-in-use ping-pongs back and forth from one fabric face to the other, always passing over the yarn-not-in-use, just as a ping pong ball passes back and forth over a net. In actuality, the yarn not in use is stranded in the "ditch" between the front and back needles. |
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| ...like on a puffer jacket... |
Ping-pong picking on a green and yellow hat (go Pack!)
Here's a green and yellow "PACKERS" hat.
The yellow word and the green word are directly behind one another on the two fabric faces of this reversible hat, and each reads correctly. This is because the colors have been knit uncoupled from one another via ping-pong picking. Again, via the ping-pong technique, the same color can appear in the same place on front and back, if necessary to the design.
This video ⬇ shows ping-pong picking in action. A green yarn ping-pongs over a yellow, meaning, the yellow is not in use, while the green goes "through the fabric," appearing on both fabric sides.
(Again, ping-pong is a variant of picking, which is a type of four needle double knitting, and the original picking video can be found here.)
The actual knitting part of picking is the same between regular picking its ping-pong variant, it's just that the yarns used are not the same. Again: ping-ponging uses one color of yarn, whereas "regular picking" involves two.
All the rest of this post tells the details of planning, charting, and working projects, but this little video shows the essence: the ping-pong technique which is the heart of uncoupling. And, uncoupling is the heart of knitting reversible (legible) words.
If the video does not load for you, here is a direct link.___________
The concept isn't hard, but there are a few details to work out, and that's what the rest of this post is about.
In the round or back and forth?
IMHO, reversible words ares conceptually easiest worked in the round--at least for the first time--because there is less color-confusion if all color changes happen the same way every round. In the round means the background color stays the same and the contrast color stays the same, all project long. Further, there's less chance of rowing out when working in the round. The video above shows working in the round.
In-the-round requires using long needles and magic-loop technique, more on this below. The set up is yellow on the "front/outside" and green on the "back/inside" throughout the project. However, if the idea of wrangling needles around in magic loop doesn't appeal, there is a little flat-knit project at the end of this post.
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| Magic loop set up for four needle double knitting (reversible hat). In this photo, the first round of the reversible word has been knit and the second round is about to start. |
To knit this demo hat, there were 6 planning steps + knitting the hat, 7 steps altogether.
Hat knit with reversible words: the six prep steps.
Step 1: Pattern. Choose or make a hat pattern for a plain one-color hat. I made up a pattern based on a swatch. I cast on 112 stitches, which worked with my needles, yarn and gauge, and is divisible by 8 (important later when decreasing the hat top).
IMPORTANT! Use or make a pattern for a hat LARGER than usual, because double knitting makes a thicker fabric with less stretch. Also, when stretched, double knitting isn't very pretty: it wants to "split" along the columns where the yarn goes back and forth, and the splits show the hidden inside strands. Therefore, unlike an ordinary hat, do not plan for negative ease. In fact, safest is if you plan a hat the biggest you can imagine, without it actually falling down over your face. (And if it does end up somewhat big, well, it's possible to tighten a hat band (* footnote) but not really possible to loosen it.)
Step 2: Choose your reversible word(s). I'm a fan, so Wisconsin's football team provided my word: "PACKERS."
Step 3: Choose colors. Team colors make my color choice easy: green and yellow.
Step 4: Needles. Recall that in the two basic techniques in four-needle double knitting--slide-by and picking (including the ping pong variant)--the stitches not in use are often parked on the cables of their corresponding circular needle, front or back as the case may be. In this way, the cable becomes a temporary stitch holder.
But...in order to park stitches ON a flexible cable, there has to BE enough cable on which to park the stitches, even when the needle tips are pulled up out of the work. To be sure of plenty of cable, I used 40" circulars for my 112 stitch hat. Naturally, an ordinary sized hat is not going to fit around such long needles. Therefore, as shown above I set up the work on long circulars via the magic loop technique.
Step 5: Alphabet. Choose any knitting or even cross-stitch alphabet you prefer--the internet has many. I chose this alphabet by Sylvia Leake. It is free and comes in PDF format. (Thank you Syvia for making this alphabet available.)
Step 6: Chart the word. If using colored pencils and actual (knitting) graph paper, fill in both words forward, using different colors. You may wish to color the boxes onto tracing paper, laid over graph paper to make the next steps more visible.
Reverse one copy by flipping it over.
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| The yellow has been flipped because it will be knit in this position on the green back/inside. When the hat is flipped inside out, this word will read correctly. Stated otherwise, if you work this word from the back (purling), it will read correctly from the front--visible when the hat is turned inside out. |
Lay both copies exactly atop one another and tape the sandwich to a window facing the sun, or a glass top coffee table with a strong light under. The light shining through both papers shows where the boxes overlap. There will be a different color where the green and yellow overlap.
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| ...a sandwich showing where the boxes overlap. |
Wherever the boxes overlap, make an "x" in that box: the overlap combo color (here, a sort of brownish green) is sometimes hard to distinguish, so marking overlaps with an "x" eliminates confusion. Finalize the chart by again taking out the colored pencils and trace over the yellow boxes from the lower layer, transferring them onto the upper: this gives a single piece of paper, better than staring into the sun at a taped-up paper sandwich.
The final Packers chart is below.
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| Click HERE to enlarge final Packers chart. The "x's" mark where stitches from the front and back words overlap. |
If using a graphics (computer) program, it's the same process, only virtual: lay out the graph paper (background) in the appropriate row/column proportion, then fill in the boxes on the grid to make the word, once in each color. Make each word semi transparent, put each on a different layer, reverse (flip) one copy, then overlap the words. Again make an "x" where the boxes overlap. The result is the same sandwich in virtual form: the final chart from which you'll knit.
Because the front and back patterns are overlapped, each box in the overlapped pattern represents TWO stitches, one knit on the front set of needles, and one purled on the back set of needles, using the four-needle double knitting techniques.
Once assembled out of the two layers, four kinds of boxes show in the final pattern
- gray which is an unfilled (background) box
- yellow boxes
- green boxes
- brownish overlap boxes, these are where yellow on one side overlaps with green on the other side, and these boxes are marked with an "x"
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GRAY means "plain background." Where there are no letter-stitches on either side, the gray box says to work a "plain background" stitch on both sides, meaning purl a green stitch on the green fabric face (inside/back) and knit its partner as a yellow stitch on the yellow fabric face (front/outside).-->These stitches are coupled: each green is backed with a yellow, each yellow with a green. Coupled stitch-pairs like these are worked with ordinary picking technique.
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YELLOW box means, yellow all the way through: yellow on both faces of the fabric. I am to purl in yellow on the green inside (a contrast color stitch which IS part of a letter on the back) AND knit in yellow on the yellow outside (a background stitch which is NOT part of a letter on the front). In a yellow box, the yellow yarn "ping-pongs" back and forth between the back and front needles, while the green ("net") yarn simply strands "in the ditch," between the front and back needles, and under the yellow stitches.
--> These stitch-pairs are UNcoupled: each yellow is backed with a yellow partner, while the green is not worked at all, but simply strands along. Uncoupled stitch-pairs like these are worked with ping-pong technique.
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GREEN box means green all the way through: green on both faces of the fabric. I am to purl in green on the green fabric face (a background color stitch which is NOT part of a letter on the back/inside) AND knit in green on the yellow fabric face (a contrast stitch which IS part of a letter on the front/outside). In a green box, the green yarn "ping-pongs" back and forth between the back and front needles, while the yellow ("net") yarn simply strands along in the ditch, under the green stitches.
--> These stitch-pairs are UNcoupled: each green is backed with a green partner, while the yellow is not worked at all, but simply strands along. Uncoupled stitch-pairs like these are worked with ping-pong technique.
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"X" (overlap) boxes mean that stitch-pair is part of a letter on both sides: this is where the stitches of the inside and outside letters happen to overlap. Therefore, I am to do the opposite of what a background stitch would look like. "X" means purl yellow on the back (green) side and knit its partner in green on the front (yellow) side. This yields contrast color stitches on both fabric faces, as it must be if the words are to show in contrast colors. As with the gray (background) boxes...
-->These stitch-pairs are coupled: each yellow is backed with a green, each green with a yellow. Coupled stitch-pairs like these are worked with ordinary picking technique.
We'll see each of these four box types again below, in a detailed walk-though of knitting from the chart. But before we can get to working words, we have to have a hat to knit the words upon. So, after creating the pattern in the first 6 (planning) steps, now comes step 7: knitting the darn thing.
Knit the hat
This hat is knit from the ⬆ brim to the ⬆ crown (black arrow) ⬆
Lock rows are explained in greater detail in an earlier post. The short version is, these are rows where the alternate colors are picked alternately: a green on the front followed by a green on the back, then a yellow on the front followed by a yellow on the back. These lock rows are shown by the PURPLE ARROWS.
The actual letters of the reversible word "PACKERS" is shown by the RED ARROWS
However, except for the dotted lock rows, and the actual stitches of the word, the whole rest of this demo hat is knit as separate yellow and green fabrics, each side in turn. In other words, the only actual double knitting is in the rounds with arrows, and these show as contrasting color stitches: green on yellow, yellow on green. Combining double knitting with plain backgrounds knit separately has advantages explained in this post. Of course, you could work reversible words as part of a more complex double knitting pattern (example) but for this intro demo, the plain-background method is going to be less distracting.
To actually start, I cast on 112 stitches in yellow yarn, using a 40" circular needle and long tail cast on, then joined these stitches into a circle. Using magic loop, and ONLY the yellow yarn, I worked a lower band in P1, K1 ribbing for about 1¼inches (3 cm).
Next, using a second needle 40" circular needle, I picked up the green yarn through the cast on, as shown in this post. (Hint: count your stitches and make sure you picked up stitch-for-stitch. It's easy to miss a stitch or two.)
Using ONLY the green yarn, I worked around the first two rounds of green in purl for a broad and thick fold line. I then worked a green ribbing to the same height as the yellow, establishing the ribbing so each protruding green knit column slots into a recessed yellow purl column and vice versa--when joined, the ribbings will snuggle together.At the end of knitting the two bands, the yellow fabric and the green have been worked as separate layers, which, so far, are only connected via the pick-up through the bottom of the brim.
Above the ribbing, I folded the green ribbing up inside the yellow. In this position, in order to continue in stockinette on the green, I would have to PURL, because I am now working that fabric from the back. Therefore, once I made sure the green and yellow ribbings ended on the same column, I worked a wrap and turn on the ending green stitch. Working the wrap and turn means that the green, previously KNIT from the front, in the ordinary direction, would now be able to be PURLED from the back in the ordinary direction--you'll see what I mean as soon as you start working. The resulting set-up puts the stitches on the needle as shown above: the yellow fabric face toward me on the outside of the hat (knitted on the front needles) and the green fabric face away from me, inside the hat (purled on the back needles). I'm now ready for the first round of actual double knitting.
With both yarns now headed in the same direction, I placed a beginning-of-round marker (BOR) on both fabric faces, then worked a "lock row" above the ribbing by alternately double knitting the colors via ordinary "picking" in both yellow and green: green back, green front, followed by yellow back, yellow front. (These are the PURPLE ARROWS in the above photo.) This row LOCKS the two previously separate fabrics into one double-sided double knit fabric. (There is more about"lock rows" in this post.)
Geek note: As a subtle touch, the lock stitches are worked above the purl columns on both sides, which, IMHO, looks better than above the knit stitches. This is possible because snuggling the ribbing for the two sides sets up for alternating stitches being above the purl columns on each fabric face.
At the end of the first lock round (lower purple arrow) I worked an equal number of rounds (7, I think) on each fabric face as separate fabric, knitting the yellow and purling the green. Then, another lock round (upper purple arrow), then two more rounds separate. I am now at the BOR marker, and finally on the round where double knitting the word is to begin.
Geek note: to avoid "jogs" where the double-knitting lock rows begin and end, slip the first stitch above the contrast color--just as you would do to avoid jogs in ordinary stranded jogless stripes.
To center the word on the hat front, a bit of math. The calculation is...
- 112 stitches of the hat - 60 stitches for the word = a total of 52 plain background stitches.
52 / 2 = 26 background stitches from the BOR marker to the beginning lower edge of where the word begins: stitch 1, row 1 of my "PACKERS" pattern. This means that after working the 60 stitches of the PACKERS pattern, an additional 26 plain background stitches would bring me around to the BOR marker again. With the same number of background stitches either side of the BOR, I know the word is centered.
Therefore, to reach to where the chart begins, I purl 26 stitches in green on the back stitches, then knit 26 stitches in yellow on the front stitches. After wrangling around my cables, I put the needles into the four-needle knitting position, and now ready to begin double-knitting the words of the pattern, starting with stitch 1 from bottom row of the chart.
So, now that we are finally at the chart, and here's a walk-through of the first thirteen stitches on the first row. This walk-through includes a column for choosing which technique to use with which kind of box: regular picking or ping-pong picking.
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| Close up of the first 13 stitches of the Packers chart. Click to enlarge. Click to open the whole Packers chart. |
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WALK-THROUGH
|
st # |
kind of box |
what to do on BACK |
what to do on FRONT |
pick or ping-pong?
|
result |
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1 |
yellow |
Strand the green, then lifting the yellow yarn over the stranded green, purl the yellow |
With the green still stranded below, knit the yellow |
Ping-pong |
The green is stranded “in the ditch” while the yellow “ping-pongs” from the back purl stitch to the front knit stitch over the green. This first stitch-pair is therefore “uncoupled” with yellow backing yellow. |
|
2 |
yellow |
With the green still stranded in the ditch below, purl the yellow |
With the green still stranded below, knit the yellow |
Ping-pong |
Just like the first stitch-pair, in this second stitch-pair the green remains stranded below, with the yellow ping-ponging over it to appear on both fabric faces: another uncoupled stitch-pair with yellow backing yellow |
|
3 |
X |
X means the letter-stitches happen to overlap. Therefore, work a contrast color on the back—purl a yellow… |
and knit a green on the front. |
Picking |
This coupled stitch-pair, like all x-box stitches, puts a (contrast color) yellow on the (green) back, and a (contrast color) green stitch on the (yellow) front. NOTE: If you look at the close-up carefully, you see that the X box is neither green nor yellow, but a bit brownish, because that's the color resulting from overlapping yellow and green. However, as said earlier, it's a bit hard to distinguish this color, which is why it pays to avoid confusion by putting an X in the overlapping boxes. |
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4, 5, and 6 |
green |
Strand the yellow. Pull the green yarn over the yellow and purl the green |
With the yellow stranded below, knit the green |
Ping-pong |
The yellow is stranded in the ditch, while the green ping-pongs from the back purl stitch to the front knit stitch three times, thus creating stitch-pairs 4, 5 and 6. These three stitch-pairs are “uncoupled,” with green backing green. |
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7 |
gray |
Purl in green |
Knit in yellow |
Picking |
A gray box means work plain background: green on the back, yellow on the front. This stitch-pair, like all gray box stitches, is coupled |
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8 and 9 |
yellow |
strand the green. Pull the yellow yarn over the green, and purl the yellow |
with the green still stranded below, knit the yellow |
Ping-pong |
green stranded in the ditch, yellow ping-pongs over green strand to appear on both fabric faces, these two uncoupled stitch-pairs are yellow backed with yellow. |
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10 and 11 |
green |
strand the yellow. Pull the green yarn over the yellow and purl the green |
with the yellow stranded below, knit the green |
Ping-pong |
yellow stranded in the ditch, green ping-pongs over yellow strand to appear on both fabric faces, these two uncoupled stitch-pairs are green backed with green |
|
12 and 13 |
gray |
purl in green |
knit in yellow |
Pickiing |
these two coupled stitch-pairs put a “plain background” stitch on each fabric face: green on the back, yellow on the front |
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...and so on down the row, where the four different kinds of boxes on the charted pattern tell you what to do for each set of stitches.
The walk-through above first tells what to do on the back, then what to do on the front. However, there's no particular reason to work the back stitch before the front, that just happens to be the way my mind works. The knitting police won't come if you work the front stitch before the back stitch. What IS important is consistency. Choose one method and stick to it. If you have to jump up in the middle of a row or round, take the extra second to work through to the second stitch of the cycle before putting down the work. That way, you know where to start up again--less chance of being one stitch off between the fabric faces.
Slide-by
I've said that the slide-by technique (used for blocks of color) is usually used for backgrounds, but it IS used in letters where two letters overlap so that several same-color stitches appear in a row. Nowhere in the walk-through of the first thirteen stitches was there a block of coupled color requiring slide-by, but slide-by does come up later in the that row, per the below close up.
Here four coupled stitches lay side-by-side in x-boxes. It's a bit hard to see, but these aren't actually green stitches, they are more the brownish color resulting from an overlap. X-boxes mean contrast color on back AND front, so these four adjoining X-boxes mean four green stitches in a row on the yellow background coupled to four yellow stitches in a row on the green. Where there are four same-color stitches in a row, then we are in "blocks of color" territory, and slide-by becomes the way to go. Again, slide-by is only for coupled stitches, regardless of whether they are in a word, as here, or in a background. This means that slide-by in reversible letter knitting is identical to slide-by in regular four-needle double knitting: no need for a word-specific modification.
Above the word: finishing the hat top
Above the double-knit word, I worked individual fabrics (yellow and green) until the hat was high enough to work the hat-top decreases. I treated the front and back layers as if they were separate hats, working all the decreases in the background color for that side: all yellow on the outside, with the green stitches held out of the way on the cables of their long needle acting as a stitch holder until the yellow fabric is finished, then the hat turned inside out, the green stitches again activated and the green fabric shaped and finished. Recall that when you turn the work inside out and want to knit the green stitches, you'll find them headed the wrong way because they were previously being worked from the back, but a quick wrap and turn will let you knit in the usual manner.
If you used an existing hat pattern as the base for your reversible word project, follow that pattern for the decreases of both inner and outer fabrics. Otherwise, the default formula for a hat top decrease is 8 decreases every other round, at evenly spaced intervals. So, I worked to the BOR marker, then from that starting point, inserted 7 additional evenly-spaced markers. On 112 stitches of my hat, this yielded 8 total markers: one every 14 stitches.
- Decrease round 1: beginning at the BOR marker, slip the marker, then on the next two stitches, work a K2tog (or any other decrease you fancy). Knit to the next marker, then repeat slipping the marker and decreasing, until you come around again to the BOR marker.
- Decrease round 2: slip the BOR marker and knit plain (no decreases) all the way around, slipping each marker as you come to it.
Repeat decrease rounds 1 and 2, switching to dpn's for the last few rounds if desired.
When within a few decrease rounds of the end (for me, that would be when there are four stitches between the markers) switch to smaller gauge needles, and work the last few decrease rounds on these smaller needles, ending when there are 16 total stitches. Arrange these stitches so they are on two dpn's, then graft the top shut. This is an adaptation of my "truly flat hat top". For symmetry, the graft should be oriented towards the word: either parallel or bisecting, rather than some oddball angle. So, if necessary, work some extra knit stitches til you reach a good starting point for the graft.
On a reversible hat, you can't really add a pom-pom or tassel unless you make a pointy sort of elf-hat: longer in the decrease section (decrease every third round instead of every second) and continue the decreases to the bitter end: when there are eight stitches on the needle, decrease to four, then run a yarn through these several times to serve as a bind off and attach the tassel or pom pom with that yarn. When worn, the extra room in the pointy hat top conceals the inside tassel or pom pom.
Combo methods--individual layers combined with double knitting
Only the lock rows and the word part of the Packers hat is double knit. That means, most of the hat is knit in separate layers. When knitting separate layers, you can fancy things up by making the opposite fabric faces quite different. This is one of the advantages of knitting the project as separate layers where possible.
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| OUTER LAYER as knit INNER LAYER as knit |
Here is a hat in official colors of the Ottawa Senators ("SENS") ice hockey team: red, white and black. Usually, double knitting is restricted to two colors, but with combo methods, three colors or even more are a breeze. The arrows show what method was used where.
The yellow pertains only to the INNER layer, all other arrows pertain to both layers.
- Green arrows: Cast on. Unlike the Packers hat, there is no ribbing on this hat, but it is the same method of cast on: inner red through a black outer long-tail cast on. There was only one purl row worked for a turning row (in the Packers hat, there were two).
- Lower purple arrows: actual lock row--this is double knitting via ordinary four-needle picking. Above this lock row, I switched the black yarn on the outside to the inside, while the red yarn from the inside switched to the outside. So far, there are only two colors in this hat: black and red.
- Lower blue arrow : FAKE lock row, worked as stranded knitting (ordinary two-color knitting) on the outer layer only. This switches the working yarn from the red it was previously, to a third color, which is white. Above this row, the hat is knit in white on the outside, but remains in black on the inside.
- Red arrows : reversible word SENS. Double knitting via ping-pong picking--these are actually the only rounds on this entire project worked with the special technique of ping-pong picking. This makes a black word on white outside, and a white word on black inside.
- Middle blue arrow : FAKE lock row, worked as stranded knitting (ordinary two-color knitting) on the outside fabric face only. This switches the working yarn from white to black on the outer layer only.
- Yellow arrows: the word "OTTAWA" was worked using stranded (ordinary two-color) knitting on inner layer only. In other words, the white yarn for this word came from a separate ball of white, it is NOT the white yarn from the outer fabric layer.
- Upper blue arrows : more fake lock rows worked in stranded knitting, one on the outer layer, one on the inner. Above this "fake lock row," the top of the hat was knit in red, first as an independent layer on the outside, then as an independent layer on the inside. In this red portion, each fabric layer was decreased individually, as for the PACKERS hat.
Flat project
A flat project with reversible words doesn't require magic loop, so that is an upside. On the downside, flat knit double knitting may be more prone to rowing out. Further, it is a bit harder to conceptualize because you have to turn the project at the end of each row, so that the color-meaning of certain chart-boxes changes. We'll circle back to this shortly.
Degree of overlap
The SENS and PACKERS hats were knit in the round. On each, a word of the same length appears on both fabric faces. This means that the words are the same length and overlap exactly.
--First, this project features words of different lengths.
--Second, this project is flat knit.
Here's the little project, IRL on my back door.
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| Gotcha coming and going... |
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The planning steps...
First, chart each word forward.
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| First word charted forward |
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| Second word charted forward |
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| Second word, flipped for "back" fabric |
Reading a chart for flat-knitting is a bit different than for in-the-round because, as you turn the piece at row-end, the background color changes and so does the contrast color. Specifically...
An unfilled box always means "background color" (gray on the PACKERS chart, white on this chart). In-the-round, the background colors don't change sides, BUT in flat knitting, they do. In other words, in flat knitting you have to look to see what background color is where, before you can know in which order color-pairs in a plain box are to be worked, because the background color reverses from side to side.
An "x" (overlap) box always means to use work a contrast-color stitch-pair in that box. When knitting in the round, contrast colors don't change sides, BUT in flat knitting, they do. So, in flat knitting, you have to see which contrast color is where, before working an "x" box.
So the rule is that with flat knitting, the colors in COUPLED stitch pairs (unfilled boxes and "x" boxes) reverse from row to row as the work is turned.
However, for UNcoupled stitch boxes. the meaning does not change between round and flat knitting. These are the boxes which have a single color in them: pink and green in the HI / BYE chart above, yellow and green in the PACKERS chart. Wherever there is a colored box, whether in flat knitting or in-the-round, you ping-pong that color all the way through the fabric, so it appears on BOTH fabric faces for the stitch pair in that box.
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