Short row or ‘holding’ knitting – 1

This is a method of adding colour and texture to knitting by using the ‘holding’ facility on the machine and working short rows of stitches. When using this method diagonal lines, wedges, or blocks of colour can be knitted. When working two diagonally joined blocks, as shown in the example at the bottom of the page, the underneath part of the diagonal is always knitted first. Holding may also be used to shape your knitting, the simplest form of this is to work wedges as if they were slices of a round pie, which will create a circle with rows of stitches radiating out from the centre. Any colour striping will follow the radiating row pattern.

Tip: it may help to work from a diagram – however simple your pattern.

Machine settings

Needles pulled fully out towards (UWP) will not knit when machines are set as follows:

Brother machines – set N-H lever to H.

.

Knitmasters/Silver Reeds – swivel L and R silver front levers (Russell levers) on front of carriage so that they point out towards you.

Basic principles of short row knitting

• Always start with the carriage the opposite end from the needles that are going to brought into holding position (UWP).
• You may bring as many needles as you like to hold position when the carriage is going towards the needles but you can only bring one needle forward when the carriage is going away from the needles in hold position.
• The fastest method of short row patterning is to bring one needle forward on every row.
• The steepest gradient it is possible to create is by bringing one needle to hold on every other row.
• WHEN YOU ARE BRINGING NEEDLES INTO HOLDING POSITION THE ROWS GET SHORTER.
• WHEN YOU ARE PUSHING THE NEEDLES BACK INTO WORKING POSITION THE ROWS GET LONGER.
• To work a balanced fabric you usually work the same number of rows when pushing the needles back into working position as you did when bringing them into holding position.

An example of simple wedges knitted with short rows. The rows run horizontally across the piece of finished knitting.

Colour A: is knitted pulling needles out to h.p. (hold position) and colour B is knitted pushing them back to w.p.(working position)

Colour B: before commencing section B the carriage must be moved to the side of the bed on which the first needle was brought out to hold

Original pdf file can be downloaded from:

https://studentcentral.brighton.ac.uk/webapps/blackboard/content/listContentEditable.jsp?course_id=_42974_1&content_id=_863549_1&mode=quick#contextMenu

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