Shaping notation in Japanese patterns

OK, so I’ve neglected this blog for a while, but I haven’t completely forgotten about it. I’d like to revive it by posting a draft of a shaping tutorial I recently made. One of the most common gripes I hear about Japanese patterns – even the ones that have been translated into English – are that the shaping instructions are confusing, vague, incomplete, baffling… well, you understand the idea.

Have you ever looked at a Japanese charted pattern and been confused by what all the numbers on the side mean? For example, you might see numbers like this floating above the armscye on the schematic:

10 RE (that’s rows even)
2-4-1
2-2-1
1-4-3

They’re almost always three numbers, such as 2-1-5. (If there are four numbers, it’s because the item is worked in the round and/or has evenly spaced shaping worked in more than two locations, not just at the right and left edges of the work.) This kind of notation is used almost exclusively in knitting patterns, but I have seen it pop up in crochet patterns once in a blue moon.

The good news is that these instructions are, contrary to complaints, not the least bit vague. They’re very precise and tell you exactly when to increase or decrease (or work short rows).

You can download the tutorial right here: Japanese shaping notation (second draft 7/28/2011). You’re welcome to link to this page if you find the tutorial helpful, but please do NOT repost this tutorial anywhere online (that includes your website, blog, Facebook, Ravelry, etc.). Many thanks to Pierrot Yarns for allowing me to use one of their schematics in my tutorial.

Questions? Comments? Feedback is most definitely welcome! I consider this a draft, so I’m happy to revise it if anything is confusing. I have proofread it several times, but if you do happen to spot a typo, please let me know so I can fix it ASAP.

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Japanese pattern-reading tutorial: Lesson 5b knitting

Without further ado, I want to finish up the pattern-reading tutorial for the kid’s sweater. (Sorry that it took me so long to do the final lesson – real life interfered for a while.)

OK, so what’s left is the front neckline and the finishing. Here’s what the schematic for the entire front looks like:

Up until the collar, it’s identical to the back piece. (Note that there’s probably a typo on the front schematic. It says that the top section should be 40cm and 78 sts, while the back piece says 44cm and 78 sts. Since the stitch pattern (k2p2 ribbing) and needle size are identical, I can only assume the front should be 44cm as well.)

So let’s zoom in on the collar and see what’s going on there:

It’s pretty busy, but I’ve marked the important parts (i.e., the parts different from the back). The blue at the sides is garter stitch, just like for the back piece. The blue in the center is for the collar. Basically, after 14 rows (marked in orange), you begin working the front sides separately, with garter stitch on each edge of the collar. The text above the collar tells us that these garter stitch edges on the collar should be 3 sts (on each side). The collar is worked for 28 rows (marked in orange), while continuing the k2p2 ribbing for the rest of the front. Marked in red at the top is instructions to bind off. So bind off all the stitches between the two black marks. (I accidentally cut off the measurement marks at the top, but if you look at the schematic of the entire front, you can tell it’s 18 sts between the black BO mark and the collar, so you bind off 36 sts in total – 18 sts on each side of the collar.)

Now for finishing. We know that we have to bind off stitches for the collar, as shown in the schematic. That implies that the rest of the stitches are not bound off. Those who can read Japanese know that the tips section at the top suggests kabuse-hagi as the join method for the shoulders. I’m familiar with this technique from machine knitting, but as far as I know, it has no English name in hand-knitting terms. But let’s assume you can’t read the Japanese bind-off suggestion. What to do? Well, choose a bind-off that makes sense for your particular pattern. Since the shoulders have been worked in k2p2 ribbing, Kitchener stitch might be a nice method. Others might choose a 3-needle bind-off – really, any join method you prefer will work. Likewise, the instructions say to join the sides with mattress stitch. However, if you didn’t know that, you’d just choose whatever method you find most appropriate.

The only part left after that is the tassels on the collar, as seen in the photo of the finished pattern.

Basically, we’re shown that there are two tassels, each one attached to one lapel. The text in the middle informs us where they’re located relative to the center of the collar. The text at the side tells us how to make the tassels. Remember how in the first lesson I mentioned that if you see ２本どり it means to use 2 strands of yarn? Well here in the tassel instructions we see ５本どり which shows us that the tassels are each made with 5 strands of yarn. It also says 14cm, so the tassels are made with 5 strands of yarn, each 14cm long. No specific instructions are given for attaching them to the sweater, so use whatever method you want.

So that takes us to the end of this sweater tutorial. Any questions about this particular pattern, or using Japanese knitting/crochet patterns in general? Just leave a comment and I’ll answer to the best of my ability.

p.s. Don’t forget about the Pierrot Yarns knitting and crochet contest! The deadline is May 31, and there are some really great prizes. I can’t enter myself (it wouldn’t be fair, since I’m employed as their translator), but I’m eager to see what other people enter. I’m sure there will be some really beautiful items.

Japanese pattern-reading tutorial: Lesson 4b knitting

Welcome back, everyone. Hope your sweaters are going well. I just finished the back of mine, so soon I’ll cast on for the front.

First, I’d like to go over something I forgot last time and only realized when a helpful soul on Ravelry reminded me. At the bottom of the schematic (circled in pink), you’ll find a number plus 目 indicated how many to cast on. Here it’s 62目, so 62 stitches. You’ll also see 36c (62目), also circled in pink. That c is just centimeters, and in some patterns you’ll see it abbreviated as cm instead. It just reminds you that not only are you supposed to have 62 st, the piece should be 36 centimeters wide.

I’ve also marked the line at the bottom in blue. What’s that for? Here it serves two functions: it tells us that we cast on 62 st along the edge, but it also tells us that we’re working the piece flat. If it were an oval instead of a line with two endpoints, it would mean that we should work the item in the round. This is especially important in some patterns where the front and back are the same, because the pattern may only show you one of them. You need to check that line at the bottom to see if you’re supposed to knit two identical flat pieces or one circular piece.

OK, so back to where we left off with the kid’s sweater pattern. We’ve just finished the stockinette portion of the body, and now we’re moving to k2p2 ribbing. Here’s a quick rundown of what we see in the schematic:

• red: cast on 8 stitches (4cm) – note that this is repeated on each side
• green: shows where the newly cast-on 8 st should be
• purple: tells us that the edges are knit in garter stitch
• orange: shows us that the garter stitch strip should be 4 st wide (look up ガーター編み in the ABCs of Knitting glossary)
• gray: shows us that the middle is worked in k2p2 ribbing (again, check the ABCs of Knitting site)
• blue: uses international knitting symbols to show us which stitches our k2p2 ribbing should end with at each edge (more on this below)

That’s pretty straightforward, right? It may seem like a lot of info all at once, but it’s nothing we can’t handle, right?

So about those international knitting symbols… here we have the two most basic ones: a straight vertical line for knit, and a straight horizontal line for purl. You can see this and other common knitting symbols here at the ABCs of Knitting. Removing all the other info from the schematic, we have this:

||–||–  (big white space here) –||–||

We all know that k2p2 ribbing is k2, p2. But what this is telling us is that when we get to the end of the row, we should end with k2. That’s it, and it’s just because 70 st isn’t a multiple of four, so they’re telling you what to do with those leftover 2 stitches. (The sweater is 78 st wide after casting on additional stitches for the arms, but remember that 4 on each edge are in garter stitch. That leaves us with a k2p2 center panel of 70 st.) In a written pattern, this would be written out as something such as *k2, p2*, rep from * to * until 2 st remain, k2.

Finally, we need to know how to finish off the back piece. Circled in blue below, we have 伏せ止め “cast off”, but it doesn’t tell us how many stitches. In my experience, it will usually say a number first, then 伏せ止め “cast off”, but here it doesn’t. We can still tell how many stitches to bind off, though, because the stitches are all listed in the line above the back schematic. I’ve drawn red lines down connecting them to make it really clear. That middle section to bind off is 36 stitches (21 centimeters) wide.

There are no instructions about what to do with the remaining stitches. Sometimes there will be, but only if the designer really wants you to use a certain technique. Otherwise, Japanese patterns assume that you know an appropriate method and will use it. So here, for example, you might bind off the shoulder stitches in pattern, or use 3-needle bind-off to join the back and front shoulder stitches. Since it doesn’t explicitly tell us to bind off the shoulder stitches, I assume working a 3-needle bind-off from live stitches is the best alternative here, so that’s what I’m choosing.

The only part left now is to figure out the neckline for the front. I’ll leave that for the next lesson, because this is already really long. (I wrote the shaping instructions below first, so I’ll just leave them here for now.) If you have questions about the neckline before next week, please feel free to post in the tutorial thread on Ravelry.

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Shaping in Japanese charted patterns: This particular sweater doesn’t have any shaping, so we haven’t yet covered how increases and decreases are depicted in Japanese charted knitting patterns. (For crochet patterns, there’s usually a complete chart of the armhole and neckline decreases.) So I’ll show you how the shaping works using this pattern, French-sleeve Ensemble Sweater (Pierrot | Ravelry), which flexibleknits recently asked me about.

For a very thorough explanation of shaping, please see Clearwaterknits website. It’s intended for machine knitters, but the shaping rules work the same for hand knitting. In a nutshell, it works like this: patterns use a sequence of three numbers to indicate how many stitches to increase/decrease, on which rows, and how many times. So in a pattern schematic, you’ll see a list of numbers next to the usual suspects (armholes and necklines). In the French-sleeve Ensemble Sweater, it looks like this [click on picture to open larger version if desired]:

The ones circled in pink are for the arms. Since there’s no corresponding list of numbers on the front diagram, it means the shaping is the same for the front and back (i.e., use the back armhole shaping for the front as well). Circled in blue on the back piece is the neckline shaping (see that tiny line pointing to the neckline?). Circled in blue on the front piece is the neckline shaping for the front piece, also with a line pointing to the neckline. So here’s an example where the shaping for the front and back are different. Circled in green is shaping for the shoulders, which you’ll only find in some patterns. Finally, the parts underlined in orange tell you how many stitches to bind off at the neckline.

Here’s how to interpret it: #-#-# stands for rows-stitches-times. If there’s a row at the top marked 段平, it means “knit even”, i.e., no increases or decreases. You don’t even have to remember 段平, actually: just remember that if you see one single number instead of #-#-#, it’s knit even. Increases and decreases are listed in the same #-#-# way. The only way to tell whether you’re supposed to decrease or increase is from the shape of the schematic. In the French-sleeve Ensemble Sweater, the sleeve are written like this:

• 14段平
• 14-1-2
• 15-1-2

First, remember that you’re working from the top of the pattern up to the neck, so read the list of shaping instructions from the bottom up. That means the one with 15 is first. So following the rows-stitches-times formula, we get:

• work 14 rows even
• every 14 rows, increase 1 stitch, twice
• every 15 rows, increase 1 stitch, twice

If you look next to the list (also circled in pink), you’ll see +4目. I mentioned previously that 目 means “stitch”, but even without it, that +4 reminds us that the increase result in 4 extra stitches. Keep in mind that these are the instructions for one armhole only. They assume you’ll be working both armholes the same, so it’s really this:

• work 14 rows even
• every 14 rows, increase 1 stitch on each side, twice
• every 15 rows, increase 1 stitch on each side, twice

The result is that you’ve increased by 4 st on each side, 8 st in total. Easy, isn’t it?

Japanese pattern-reading tutorial: Lesson 4a crochet

For the final lesson, I’ll assume you’ve worked through the entire circular chart and are now ready to move on to the brim portion of the chart. The crucial part is knowing how the circular chart (the top of the hat) and the chart arranged in straight lines (the sides of the hat) are connected. It’s shown with dotted lines, which I’ve augmented here with orange lines:

The reason the pattern switches to showing symbols in rows rather than in a circle is that for several rows, you’re just going to work even (i.e., no increases), and then you’re going to decrease. It’s hard to chart both increases and decreases in a circular chart, hence the switch to lines. Anyway, just trust the chart! After slipping to join the last round of the circle chart, chain 3 as shown in the first round of the straight chart (labeled 9 over on the right side of the chart). Then dc in each of the next 4 stitches, work your bobble cluster thingy (yes, very technical, aren’t I?), and continue. You should see that the stitches align exactly with the pattern stitch you’ve already established for the top of the hat.

Decreases begin on round 14 and continue in round 15. After that, the chart lines have been renumbered, starting with round 1 and going up to round 5, presumably to show that this is a new section (the edging). Renumbering just seems to be up to the whim of the pattern designer – sometimes they’re renumbered when a new section starts, sometimes not. Anyway, the important thing here is that we have four rounds of single crochet (just the plain X on the chart), followed by one row of crab stitch.

This isn’t a terribly good photo, but this is how the edging works up:

When it’s finished, it should look something like this (although I didn’t have a kid’s head handy to model it, sorry):

Up until I did the rounds of single crochet, this hat actually fit my huge head. I didn’t cast off, actually, because I’m planning to undo the single crochet and leave this as a beanie so that I can wear it myself.

The only thing left in the chart is the pompoms. I’m not planning on making the pompoms, because I prefer a plain beanie look, but this is what we’re shown about a) where to put the pompoms and b) how to make them. These aren’t the typical pompoms made by wrapping yarn around something a bazillion times, cinching the middle, and then cutting the edges. Instead, they’re crocheted spheres that are stuffed with fiber (or waste yarn). The first image is a simple diagram of the hat showing that you need two pompoms and where to place them. Underneath that is a simple crochet chart – again, with international crochet symbols – showing how the pompoms are made. (For crochet symbols, please see: Hass Design | Craft Yarn Council of America | Select Yarn | Tezukuri Town | Two Radiant Is.)

On the left is the chart, and on the right, they’re showing you to stuff the pompoms. The messy lines I’ve circled in pink represent the stuffing, with a helpful arrow showing where it goes (although I’m pretty sure we can all figure out where stuffing goes!). The blue line is showing that you’re supposed to use your working yarn to pull the sphere shut. No detailed information is given on how to attach the pompoms to the hat. The Japanese text in the diagram merely says “attach pompoms”, so the designer assumes you’ll choose an appropriate method. Personally, I would either sew it on or slip stitch the pompom to the hat before cinching it shut. It’s really up to you, though.

So that should be everything you need to know to work on this pattern or nearly any Japanese charted pattern. Please let me know if you have any questions, and thanks for tuning in.