I’ve ALMOST finished making my first knitted stuffed animal (Hatty the elephant from Just Knit magazine) and I’ve found it really enjoyable, so I purchased a book of knitted farm animal patterns for my next project but I’m a little stuck…
The patterns I’m used to reading are formatted ‘row 1: knit… row 2: purl… row 3: k1, k2tog’ etc. so they’re quite simple to follow, but this book seems to set them out slightly differently.
For example:
First and foll 3 alt rows (RS): purl
Inc row: knit…m1…
Inc row: knit…m1…
Inc row: knit…m1…
Begin with a purl row, rev stocking-st for 11 rows
Dec row: K2tog…
Next row: purl
Repeat the last 2 rows 11 times
What I don’t understand is for the first bit does that mean 6 rows in total and 3 of them are purls? And as for the rest it just doesn’t make sense how you could knit every increase row seeing as the pattern is for a reverse stocking stitch fabric (shown in the photos as well). Are all the increase rows supposed to be 1 after the other or with purls in between?
Sorry if this sounds ridiculous, but thank you to anyone who attempts to explain this to me
Are these the actual instructions for beginning the project? What animal are you making and what part of its anatomy are you starting with? What is the name of the book? Maybe someone has made them and they can be found on Ravelry. If so we could see a picture and there could be comments from people who have worked the patterns. I’m not at all sure how to interpret what you’ve posted. Maybe it will be clear to someone more experienced.
Sorry about that, I’ve attached a photo now but it may be a bit small (the file size restrictions on here are tiny!), so I hope you can read it okay. It’s a ram from ‘Knitted Farm Animals’ by Sarah Keen.
Really I was just confused about how to interpret the pattern. If you can see on the picture there’s several increase rows 1 after the other that are all in knit stitch, however the whole ram is knitted in reverse stocking (except the feet), so I wondered if I was supposed to insert purl rows in between these? It doesn’t appear to say so…
The pattern is set out quite differently from others I’ve read. The ones I usually use list instructions for each row, i.e. "row 1: cast on 24 stitches, row 2: knit, row 3: purl’ etc. This pattern doesn’t use row numbers and I’m not quite sure what order to do the instructions in. (It sounds ridiculous, I know!)
The first eight rows consist of 4 lots of (1 x purl row and 1 x increase row) so the first row will be P32 and the eighth row will be K12, M1, K14 etc.
You then work 11 rows in Reverse Stocking Stitch (starting and ending with a purl row.
You then start the Shaping section of the pattern.
Thank you, that makes more sense. But how do you interpret that from the pattern? It didn’t make sense to me when I read it, I wondered if you could explain it to me a bit more so I can learn to read them in future
‘First and foll 3 alt rows (RS): purl’ means the first row and every other row after it will be a purl row.
You are then given instructions for the increase rows that dovetail inbetween the purl rows.
Inc row: K9, M1, K14, M1, K9 (34sts)
until
Inc row: K12, M1, K14, M1, K12 (40sts).
Because ‘Begin with a purl row, rev stocking-st for 11 rows’ is a new sentence it should be read as a new (mini)instruction that follows on from the instruction just given.
