German short row technique is justifiably popular as it’s very easy to do and gives nice and tidy results for the back-and-forth part of a short row section in st st, or so of course also for things knit entirely flat in st st.
But when knitting in the round, because the last turning point is always worked from the opposite direction on the following round when you come back to it, for complicated and not-at-all intuitive (at least to me) reasons, the usually method of closing the hole does not work but instead leaves an unsightly puckered, twisted spot, often with a different kind of hole. Frustratingly, the vast majority of introductory material online to German short rows don’t mention this at all, much less offer solutions. Because of this, I didn’t even know it was “a thing”–I thought it must be just something I was doing wrong, something with my tension, or somehow some other mistake in execution, never imagining it might be some quirk or “flaw” inherent to the technique itself! I like to think, while not brilliant, I’m a fairly intellectual knitter: I taught myself continental combined, I’ve unvented various techniques and tricks for myself, I’m a fan of Techknitter’s Blog–in short, figuring out this sort of thing ought to have been my bread and butter. But no such luck.
So, after it nearly drove me crazy, and nearly ruined a couple small projects with these horrible puckered spots, I finally started searching around, and after a bit of digging, found (only) a handful of articles and videos addressing this issue and a few different schemes for how to fix it. Here’s a couple I liked: https://pattylyons.com/2018/06/germanshortrowsintheround/
and
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf37k_VVohg
Note, however, that both of these assume that your working st st, at least on and adjacent to the double stitches–if you’re working some other stitch pattern, I guess you’re still “on your own!”
I wanted to post this both to raise awareness of this big “quirk” in the gsr method, as well as to encourage more people to bring it and it’s solutions to people’s attention when promoting or demonstrating the method. If I save even one other person from the bewildering aggravations I experienced, I’ll be happy. For any of the half-dozen popular and glowing “introductions to gsr”-type tutorials out there on the web to even briefly mention or allude to this problem, if not actually address it, could save someone literally hours of needless confusion and irritation. I understand not everyone knits in the round, but a lot of people do, especially lately with the renewed interest in authentic folk traditions, and for a tutorial to state that one can simply substitute gsr for any pattern that calls for w&t without mentioning that this doesn’t apply to circular knitting just borders on irresponsible IMO…
(Grrr… no, I’m not bitter, why do you ask…?! Ok, rant over now…)
Anyway, Thanks for reading this important public service announcement. (As for myself, while I still acknowledge the charm of GSR, I’ll probably be primarily sticking with YO short rows, or something else more “intuitive,” from now on…)