I thought I’d share my increase method. No, not how to do the actual stitch but how to figure out where and how often to increase when your pattern says “Increase 12 (or however many) stitches evenly”.
So, you’re humming along nicely on a piece that has, say 60 stitches and the pattern tells your to increase 5 stitches evenly across. What do you do?
Flat Knitting
For flat knitting, it goes like this.
1. First, you need to know where you’re going to put those 5 increase stitches. So take the number of stitches you want to increase and add “1” to it.
5 + 1 = 6
This shows that you’re going to be dividing the current number of stitches into 6 sections between each of which you will make an increase.
2. Now you need to know how many stitches you should knit before and between the increases. So divide the number of stitches you already have by the number you got from the first step.
60 ÷ 6 = 10
This means, basically, that you can work an increase every 10 stitches to get where you want to go:
3A. If your preferred method of increase is to create two stitches in the base stitch, you might do it:
K9, increase. Repeat this 4 more times (5 increases in all) and K10 to end.
3B.If you use an M1 type of increase you would do it:
K10, M1. Repeat this 4 more times (5 increases) and end K10.
Knitting in the round
In the above section, “1” is added to the number of increase stitches desired to give you the number of segments you’ll have to increase between. Because you have edges in flat knitting, that number is always going to be one higher than the number of stitches you actually want to add. In circular knitting, there are no edges so the number of segments you need to figure with is going to be equivalent to the number of stitches by which you want to increase.
Assume the same 60 stitches and the same 5 stitch increase (evenly spaced, of course) only worked circularly.
1. 60 ÷ 5 = 12. You will have 5 segments with 12 stitches in each.
2A. If your preferred method is to create two stitches in the base stitch, you might do it: K11, increase. Repeat this 4 more times.
2B. If you use an M1 type of increase, you would do it: K12, M1. Repeat this 4 more times.
These will work even when the numbers don’t come out as evenly as our examples. Say you have 53 sts and want to increase by 7 stitches.
For a flat piece, you would add 1 to 7 to get 8 (8 stitch segments to increase between). Dividing 53 by 8 gives us 6 with a remainder of 5. In this case, split the remainder for your first and last segments. So, using an M1 increase, you would do this:
K2, M1, *K6, M1* (repeat 7 more times), K3.
For a piece knitted circularly, you would divide 53 by 7 which would give you 7 with a remainder of 4. Here you will distribute your remainder stitches among your segments so that 3 segments would have 7 stitches and 4 segments would have 8 stitches. Using an M1 increase, you might work it thus:
*K8, M1, K7, M1*; repeat three times and end K8, M1.
This, anyway, is what works for me and I hope it might be useful to you as well :)
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LOL - then there’s the “eyeball it” method: add in the increases whenever it seems about right. Very exacting, this method ;-)
Kathy - Ain’t it the truth? Heheh…
umm, about that ‘eyeballing it’ thing mentioned above (and i know everyone has resorted to it on occasion)- that’s what i’ve always called the ‘lindberg system’ of increasing/decreasing- it’s pick a spot, any spot, and land (okay, in this case inc/dec)-
this ‘playing with numbers’ reminds me that waaaay back when i was in school the teachers all said math would come in useful in so many ways we wouldn’t expect- time proves they were truthful-
i may someday have time to pick up hooks and needles again- for the moment a certain 4-letter word (work) is impeding any efforts at amusement-
stay happy-
Barb - Reminds me of what my mother described as her typing method. She called it the Columbus system - discover and land :)
I never really believed (when I was in school) that math would be of any use to me in the real world, but it has - algebra, even geometry and I’ve been glad to have the knowledge to make use of!
