{"id":248,"date":"2010-02-07T09:44:51","date_gmt":"2010-02-07T17:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/?p=248"},"modified":"2010-02-07T09:44:51","modified_gmt":"2010-02-07T17:44:51","slug":"biased-knitting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/?p=248","title":{"rendered":"BIASed knitting …"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago at a meeting of Knit1Take2<\/a> (a knitting group\u00a0 couple of my friends and I in the movie industry started), Anne pulls out this great scarf for show and tell. She did it on the bias in a variegated yarn that was smashing. I decided then that I wanted to do one but wasn’t sure what yarn I wanted to use. Last week I was in a local shop that is having a crazy yarn sale and bought some variegated yarn that would be great for scarves. The wheels started turning …. can you see where this post is heading?<\/p>\n

Bias knitting is simply working increases and decreases to give your work a slanted look. There are a few different ways to achieve this effect as well. You can start with a few stitches and simply increase until you reach the desired number, knit the length you want, then decrease down to the original number, and cast off. You can also start with the proper width and work an increase\/decrease after the first stitch, pattern to the end, then work an decrease\/increase at the end (this is always the opposite of what you worked at the start). Let’s look at this method a little more closely in a 2×2 rib. Here’s a simple pattern for a left sloping bias in the 2×2 rib mentioned.<\/p>\n

Cast on 16 stitches. Selvedge stitch, *K2,P2. Repeat from * to last stitch. Selvedge stitch.<\/p>\n

Next row (Row1): Selvedge stitch, work stitches as they appear to last stitch, selvedge stitch.<\/p>\n

Bias row (Row 2): Selvedge stitch, Work 1st, inc1, continue in pattern to last 3 sts. Work next 2 stitches together (decrease 1), selvedge stitch.<\/p>\n

Repeat Row1 & 2 alternately to desired length.<\/p>\n

Work Row 1once more. Cast off all stitches in pattern.<\/p>\n

For this pattern I use a selvedge stitch that is Slip the first stitch and knit the last stitch. I like the look this gives on a scarf but you can use any selvedge stitch pattern you like. This pattern gives you a slant to the left when you are looking at the right side of the scarf. If you want it to slant to the right, work your decrease at the beginning and your increase at the end. If you experiment a little with this you will find that you may need to switch up your increases and decreases to give your work the detailed look you want. I’m a big fan of the M1 increase, but when doing a simple pattern like this it actually knits you a trapezoid instead of a rectangle. Try it. Its a really neat effect because it gives your work the effect of you having cast on a few stitches and increasing as you go. This has actually given me an idea of doing a pattern inside a sweater where I use this technique to fill it out. It’s hard to describe but once I use it I’ll post pictures and show you.<\/p>\n

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The double biased scarf<\/p><\/div>\n

Another fun thing you can do with biased knitting is work both slants on the same garment. This scarf I am working on for one of my projects (it will go to Louisa when it’s finished) demonstrates that. Again, this yarn is really fun to work with. You can see from the picture that I worked a left slant to the center, created a stocking stitch ridge with two stitches, then worked a right slant to the other edge. Can you figure out the pattern for this? A special surprise to the first person that e-mails me a working pattern for that. To make it\u00a0 little more interesting, figure out the second half of the pattern as well. As you can see, half way through I decided to reverse the slants! This would be a great pattern for an afghan. With that I’ll leave you with a small puzzle. You can get this same effect by working in the round. If you were making an afghan or large square this is probably the technique you would use. You would also have the option of starting from the center or the edge! I’ll leave you to figure out how that would be done for now. We’ll revisit this in the future though – I have a feeling it might be a project for the 52 in 52.<\/p>\n

Hugzzz \ud83d\ude0e<\/p>\n

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A couple of weeks ago at a meeting of Knit1Take2 (a knitting group\u00a0 couple of my friends and I in the movie industry started), Anne pulls out this great scarf for show and tell. She did it on the bias in a variegated yarn that was smashing. I decided then that I wanted to do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,45,13],"tags":[980,18,51,47,50,969,32,49,48,975],"class_list":{"0":"post-248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-design","7":"category-patterns","8":"category-techniques","9":"tag-bias","10":"tag-color","11":"tag-decrease","12":"tag-in-the-round","13":"tag-increase","14":"tag-knitting","15":"tag-rib","16":"tag-selvedge","17":"tag-slant","18":"tag-variegated","19":"pmpro-has-access","20":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pNDS0-40","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ittakesballstoknit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}