[knitfilter] fussy question about squared circle knits

January 1, 2020 10:14 PM

I'm making another throw because they are kind of fun and nice to have around. I have a fussy question about the pattern which is basically big circles that you then making into squares. The question is aimed at me not spending a fortune on yarn and involves short rows for shaping. This is probably very boring but I generally find someone on here is bored enough and enough better a knitter to venture an answer.

This is the Squared Shades pattern. It's pretty straightforward. You do 60 rows of circular stockinette with some purl ridges and then use short rows to knit four sides out to squares.

I am going through a LOT of yarn, and it's not the world's cheapest. So in the part where you're alternating row of knit/row of knit with two increases, I stopped at 82 stitches on the side rather than 88. I might even pick back. I think this isn't going to affect anything.

The thing is after that you have to shape the corners, and I suspect the numbers on those short rows before you wrap/turn are probably specific to the pattern as written, not as hastily/horrifiedly modified by me when I started thinking about ordering twice as much yarn. I'm talking about the part that has half-a-side short rows with 25 stitches, then 19, 31, and 7. How do I adjust this?

If you actually read this far and have an idea, you get my enthusiastic gratitude and an imaginary medal or ticker tape parade or something.

posted by less of course to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total)

Best answer: (NB my answer is based mostly on geometric reasoning and intuition rather than knitting experience. I do knit a little, but I have never done anything like this.)

You will probably get away with using the stitch counts as written for the short rows, for three reasons.

1. Stockinette fabric is stretchy, and you are making a blanket rather than a fitted garment, so precise shaping is not too important.

2. The original numbers were probably chosen just to be good enough. The simple pattern of decreasing length by three stitches each row is probably not going to get you from a perfect circle to a perfect square.

3. The difference between that and the "right" way is fairly small. If you wanted to perfectly duplicate the pattern at a smaller size, you would scale everything linearly by a constant factor. With the numbers you've already given, that factor would be 82/88 which is a decrease of between 1/14 and 1/15. Since the short row lengths are dropping by 3 stitches every row, this means you'd only differ about every 5 rows from the pattern as written. Since you only do 8 rows per half side, that is a total of at most 16 (= 8 half-sides * 2 errors per half-side) errors across the whole pattern (and the finished circumference will over 350 stitches total).

Of course, these numbers will change slightly if you pick back and decrease the ratio further. If you go to 80/88, that is a decrease of about 1/10, or 3 errors per half-side. If you were to go all the way back to 72/88, that would be a decrease of about 1/5 or almost 5 errors per half-side. I find it hard to say at what point you would want to adjust the stitch counts given points 1 and 2, though.

The main difference in shape would be that the corners of the square would be more pointy and the sides of the square would bow in a little. If it were very bad, it might make it difficult for the finished blanket to lie flat in the middle.

If you were going to try to adjust, I would suggest changing the sequence 29, 26, 23, 20, 17, 14, 11, 8 to 29, 26, 23, 20, 17, 13, 10, 7 for 82/88; to 29, 26, 23, 19, 16, 13, 9, 6 for 80/88; to 29, 26, 22, 18, 15, 11, 8, 4 for 72/88. (Arguably, you would actually want to reduce the number of short rows in the last case. Since you want an even number, you would reduce by two, so you would probably not want to do that for any larger size. I'm not sure how best to pick the lengths of those rows, though.)

But really, I would just go with the original counts. If you make one and it looks really misshapen, you could pull it out (I know...) and try another way.
posted by eruonna at 12:29 AM on January 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Agreeing with eruonna that at 82 st, you can probably do it as written. If you reduce it by much more though, I'd consider shifting the short rows towards the corners by a stitch or two (eg, 23,17,11,6 with +4 st on rows 10, 12, 14 and 16) or removing two short rows by skipping rows 1, 2, 10 and 11. If you're trying to save yarn, probably try the latter option with less rows, as garter stitch chews through yarn fast.
posted by kjs4 at 3:04 AM on January 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Also, I don't understand why they do it this way. It's going to holes on each corner that need sewing up.

I'd consider doing short rows back and forth over each corner, instead of each side. Essentially, you'd knit over a corner, then reverse back for a bit, then go forwards over the corner again and onto the next corner and repeat. You'd need to do a purl row between each short row (which would be the knit row). I think that'd work, and there'd be less sewing up at the end - though more purling.
posted by kjs4 at 3:18 AM on January 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks! I think the problem is, not having done this kind of shaping, I don’t see what those last rows are adding, and I won’t be able to see while it’s on circs. I think if you both think leaving it as is will be close enough, I’ll try that. I don’t think I follow the idea in the 3rd comment so I’ll maybe just resign myself to some seaming. I did avoid some at the center by just doing a disappearing loop cast on and not the weird back and forth method in the pattern.
posted by less of course at 7:36 AM on January 2, 2020

Definitely do it as written if these are your first short rows. I've been knitting socks for years, so short rows are reasonably intuitive to me. I'm also allergic to following patterns that seem more complicated than they need to be.
posted by kjs4 at 4:50 PM on January 2, 2020

Response by poster: I actually just got what you’re talking about with the corners. I’ve done short rows on scarves but not enough of them for it to be totally intuitive to me what’s going on.
posted by less of course at 7:42 PM on January 2, 2020 [1 favorite]