Cowl Project | How to Read a Knitting Chart in the Round

1. Introduction: Hello, everyone, and welcome back. My name is Madeline and I create knitting and crafting content online here on Skillshare and also on my website, knittinghous square.com. In today's video, what I'm going to be showing you is how to read a knitting chart when you're working in the round. So in my previous Skillshare class, I had gone through how to read a knitting chart for flat knitting, and today we're going to be extending onto that, and I'm going to show you how to kit this cow. Now, what's cool about this cow is it's actually all knit completely from a chart. So we're going to take a chart. I'm going to show you first how to read the chart for when you're knitting in the round because it will be different than flat knitting. And once we go through the basics of how to read a knitting chart for in the round knitting, then we're going to apply those techniques to knitting this project. Now, what's great about this project is you really can knit it out of any weight of yarn. So here I have a worsted weight version, and then in the video, I'll take you through an even bigger bulky weight version. So, again, we're going to start off by learning how to read a knitting chart for flat knitting. Then we're gonna work a little bit of ribbing, and then we're going to go into alternating between knits and pearls. Then lastly, we're going to introduce in the cables. And each one of the different little repeats is going to be one of these diamond shapes in your knitting. So I hope you enjoy this tutorial. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them down below. And let's get started first with the materials. 2. Materials and Cast On: The materials I have in front of me to start this project include a stitch marker, a cable needle. A tapestry needle and then my yarn and knitting needles. First up, I recommend picking out your yarn. In this video, I'm going to be showing it using a super bulky weight. I have a yarn with the label six or the number six on the label. What you want to look at once you pick out your yarn is the size knitting needle that it recommends. This yarn recommends a US 13 knitting needle. That is the knitting needle size that I have here. In picking out your knitting needle, you want a circular knitting needle and you want it to have a cord that's 24 " or less. That way, makes it a little bit simpler to knit in the round. Another example of a project I've made is I've made the same cow. This one hasn't been blocked yet, but this one is kit out of a worsted weight yarn, I had a number four on the label, and for that one, it recommended a US nine knitting needle. I just match the knitting needle to what the yarn recommend. I've put up here on the screen the yardage requirements depending on the weight of yarn you're using. If you're using worsted weight yarn, you're going to want about 250 yards available, and if you're using bulky weight yarn, you'll want about 180 yards. Once you have your supplies in front of you, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to cast on and join in the round. Now first up, you want to decide how many stitches you want to cast on the number of stitches will vary depending on how many repeats of the pattern you want to do. So for example, if we look at one that I've previously knit here, one of the repeats is just in between the little diamonds. One diamond here, that's essentially one repeat of the pattern and each one of these diamonds is 24 stitches. No matter how many stitches you're casting on, it has to be a multiple of 24. For my worsted weight version here, I did a total of six repeats. I did six times 24 to get 144 stitches. Now that I'm using a heavier weight of yarn, I'm going to do fewer repeats. I'm going to do four repeats of the 24 stitches and I'm going to cast on a total of 96 stitches. Now, you can use any cast on method that you'd like as long as it's a stretching method. What I'm going to use is just a simple cast on method called the backward loop cast on. It starts with a slip knot. For these circular knitting needles, you can pick either knitting needle to start casting onto. Then you just loop similar to how you do a slip knot around your pointer finger to cast on additional stitches. Other great cast on methods to use are something like the long tail cast on or the German twisted cast on. If you're interested in learning more specifically about cast on methods, I have a whole video here on Skill Share going through four simple cast on methods from beginner all the way to advanced. I'll link that in the project description below. Now, once you have your number of stitches cast on, I'm going to show you real quick how I join in the round and then we'll be ready to start our cable chart with that cable pattern in the round. Once you've finish casting on your 96 stitches, you want to get one stitch marker ready and you want to put your knitting needle with your working yarn coming out of it or the yarn attached to your ball in your right hand, and then you want your knitting needle that doesn't have the working yarn coming out of it. For me, the way I cast on, it just has my yarn tail over here in my left hand. The first thing I want to do is I'm just going to lay it down right like that, and I'm going to start over here where my working art is coming out of, and I'm just going to twist or untwist, whichever way you'd like to think about it. All of those cast on bumps, they're facing down towards the table. What this is going to do is it's going to help me make sure that my work isn't twisted at all anywhere around the round. And once you've verified that you've gotten any twists that exist out, you're going to want to place your stitch marker on your knitting needle that has the working yarn. Then what I'm going to do for now is I'm just going to go right into my first stitch on my left knitting needle knit wise, and I'm just going to leave my knitting needle right there like that. That way, nothing becomes untwisted and I'm just going to set that to the side so now we can introduce in the cable chart. 3. Reading a Knitting Chart in the Round: Now next up, before we actually begin kitting the pattern, I'm just going to go through a moment how you read a cable chart for in the round knitting. So first thing to keep in mind, if you've previously seen my reading a cable chart or just a chart in general for flat knitting, when you're kitting flat, you would read the first row going from right to left and then the second row going from left to right. You're reading back and forth between the rows. But when you're knitting in the round, as we are with this pattern, you're actually knitting every single round going from the right over towards the left. For example, this first ribbing repeat row, I'm going to read from the right all the way over to the left. Then for my next round, I'm going to start back up here at the right and I'm going to read over towards the left. You're always reading right to left and then each box that represents one stitch. You'll notice the number of boxes we have going across is 24. That's why we had to cast on in multiples of 24 stitches. We're going to work this 24 stitch repeat over and over again all the way across the round. Next thing that's important, now that we know that each box is one stitch, is what do the colors mean? Knitting a chart in the round is actually easier than kitting it flat because there's only one way to read each one of these colors. A white box is going to be a knit stitch and a gray box is going to be a pearl stitch. Essentially why that is is because when we're knitting in the round, we're always working on the right side of our work, so we don't have to worry about right side versus wrong side because we're always on the right side. Again, a white box is a knit stitch, a gray box is a pearl stitch. If we look at this first round, the ribbing repeat row, what we have is a white box then a gray box, a white box, then a gray box, over and over again all the way across. All we're going to be doing across this round if we pick up our knitting once again, is we're going to be knitting, Knit one Pearl one ribbing all the way across. I'm going to start off with my first stitch as a knit stitch, bring my arm to the front. Next stitch is a pearl stitch. Knit one Pearl one. The chart only shows it for 24 stitches. You want to do this 24 stitch repeat all the way across your round, all the way until you come back and reach your stitch marker again. Now this ribbing repeat row, you actually want to do this over and over again a few times. I like to repeat this ribbing repeat row until my work measures about 1 ". That will vary depending on what weight of yarn you're using. That may only be three rounds or it could be five rounds. It depends on your weight of yarn, but continue working that ribbing repeat row. Knit one Pearl one all the way across your round over and over again until your work measures 1 ". Once you finish working, your ribbing for however long you'd like, again, I recommend about an inch. I'm going to go through and I'm going to highlight that first row of the pattern. That way, I know I've already completed that one. Now we're going to be starting with row one of the pattern for row one of the pattern, again, it's just a combination of gray and white boxes. There are no cable stitches yet. The cable stitches are going to be these ones that are larger boxes with the diagonal lines. Looking at round one here, we have gray for the first eight boxes, so we're pearling eight then we have white for the next eight boxes. We're kitting eight and then we're pearling the next eight. If you'd like to, if you'd find it helpful, you can place a stitch marker after each one of these repeats to mark where each one of your sets of 24 stitches begins and ends. Again, all I'm going to be doing here is I'm pearling eight, knitting eight, then pearling eight, and I'm repeating that 24 stitch repeat all the way across my round. This round, I'm just going to work one time also. I 4. Rounds 2 - 19: And so Round two, it has our first cable stitch in it. First, looking at how we set up before the cable stitch and I'll just point with my cable needle here. We have eight gray boxes, so we're going to pearl eight, and then we're going to work a cable stitch here. The way you tell how many stitches a cable takes up total is you just count how many boxes it spans across. Here, this cable stitch goes across eight boxes. This is an eight stitch cable. Then the next thing you want to figure out is whether you want to hold the stitches on your cable needle in the front or the back of your work. So if you wanted to hold your stitches in the front of your work, where you would look is the bottom right corner of the cable stitch, and you want to look at the diagonal line coming out of that. You want to see does this diagonal line go in front of the other shape or does it go behind the other shape? If it goes in front of the other shape, you'd want to hold them in front. If it goes behind, you want to hold them behind. In this case, this diagonal line coming out of the bottom right corner, it goes behind this other shape. We want to hold the stitches in the back of our work. Then how many stitches do we want to hold in the back of our work? We want to count how many boxes there are before the other shape begins. Here we have one, two, three, four. We want to take four stitches, hold them in the back of our work. Then we're going to knit because it's white the next four stitches on our left hand knitting needle and then we're going to work those four stitches. Again, the back is also white, we're going to work those four stitches knit wise that are being held on our cable needle. Then last up, we have eight more gray boxes, so we're going to pearl eight. First, let me work the first four stitches here, eight stitches to get over to where the cable goes in. Now again, I'm looking at the bottom right corner. The line goes behind. I'm going to hold my cable needle in the back of my work and how many stitches is it going to be? It's going to be four stitches. I'm going to take the next four stitches. For my left knitting needle, put them on my cable needle and hold it in the back of my work. Then I have four stitches. It's a white box going in front, so I'm going to knit those four stitches for my left knitting needle. Now, looking at what I do with those stitches being held in the back, the back stitches are also white, so I'm going to knit the four stitches being held on my cable needle. When you look at your cable, your cable should actually end up looking like what the pattern looked like in the chart. If you look at this chart, we took four stitches behind from the right to the left. That's exactly what we did here. We took four stitches behind going from the right over towards the left, and then we took four stitches in front going from the left over towards the right. We took four stitches, we brought them from the left towards the right. The way your cable shows up should match what the chart symbol looks like. Then we're just going to pearl eight stitches. You should be at if you added them, your marker then to indicate where your next repeat should begin. Now for my next set of 24 stitches, I'm going to do the exact same thing. I'm going to pearl eight, work the exact same cable, put four stitches on the cable needle, hold it in the back, knit four stitches from my left hand knitting needle, then knit the four stitches on my cable needle and pearl eight. I'm going to continue that all the way across this round. Now, the way this chart works is once we get into the cables, the cables are actually only going to occur every other round. You'll notice now that we just worked a cable in Round two, the next round, there are no cable stitches. It's only knits and pearls. Now again, for round three, we're just going to pearl eight, knit eight, and then pearl eight. All the way across all the repeats across the round. Now, next up on Round four, we're going to have two new cables that we're introducing. First, what I want to look at is what do I have to work before I get to the cable. Here I have six gray boxes. To start off, I'm just going to pearl my first six stitches on my first repeat. Now my cable begins. Again, what do I want to look at first? How many boxes total does the whole thing take up? Here it takes up one, two, three, four, five, six boxes. It's six stitches total. Then if I look in the bottom right corner of the box, I have a diagonal line and it's going behind the other shape. How many boxes does this first portion take up? It takes up two boxes. I'm going to take two stitches, put them on my cable needle and hold it in the back of my work. Now, next up, I have the main shape here and this takes up four boxes, this box is white, I'm going to knit the next four stitches that are on my left knitting needle. Now, the stitches that I've been holding on my cable needle to go behind the background of the shape is gray, so I need to pearl those two stitches that are being held on my cable needle. What did I do here? I took four stitches in front, going from the left to the right, four stitches in front, going from left to right, and that was all white box. I knit those stitches, and then I took two stitches behind, going from the right to the left. Te were my two stitches I brought behind those stitches I brought behind were gray, so I pearled those stitches. Now next up, if I look at the bottom right hand corner of this box, again, this box total takes up six stitches and coming out of this bottom right corner is one, two, three, four stitches and this shape goes in front. I no longer have just the diagonal line going behind. I have a whole shape that goes in front coming out of this bottom right corner. I want to take four stitches and hold them in the front of my work on a cable needle. Now, next up, I have two stitches and these are going behind, and these two stitches have to be pearled. I'm going to pearl because these two are gray, two stitches for my left hand knitting needle. Pearl, pearl two. Then I have to go back and I have to knit those four stitches being held on my cable needle in the front of my work. I what did we do in that stitch pattern? We took four stitches, four knit stitches and we brought them in front going from right to the left, and then we took two pearl stitches going behind. Again, that behind portion was gray, so we pearled those two stitches. No matter really what the cable looks like, you can always just look at the bottom right corner and decide how many stitches there are coming out of the bottom right corner, do you want to hold that in the back of your work, if it's the diagonal line going behind, or do you want to hold in the front of your work if it's the daga line going in front? Now I'm just going to finish up this one repeat, so I'm going to pearl the final six stitches. I'm going to continue working these 24 stitches for the rest of the repeats across my round. Now, since row four was a cable round, row five won't have any cables in it. If we look at what this ones showing us, we have six gray boxes. We're pearling six, knitting four, pearling four, knitting four, then pearling six all the way across the round. Now, next up on row six, there's the next cable I want to show you. First up to get over to that cable, I have to pearl six. Now when I look at this next cable stitch, I want to count first how many boxes does it take up in total. It takes up one, two, three, four boxes, so it's a four stitch cable. If I look at the bottom right corner, it goes behind the other shape, so I'm holding my cable needle in back how many stitches am I holding it back? The first two. I'm going to take two stitches on my cable needle, hold it in the back of my work. Then if I look at the other side of the cable, the remaining two stitches of the four stitch cable, those are going in front and I'm knitting both of them. I'm going to knit the next two stitches for my left knitting needle. Then the ones going behind, it's white behind. Those are going to be knit stitches as well on my cable needle. Go to knit the two stitches on my cable needle. Now in the middle, I have four gray boxes, so I'm going to pearl four. For the cable on the other side here, if I look at the bottom right corner. Again, the whole cable overall takes up four boxes. The bottom right corner, this one actually goes in front and how many stitches go in front, the first two stitches. I'm going to take two stitches on my cable needle, hold them in the front of my work. Then the ones going behind. This whole cable stitch is all white. The ones going behind are also knit stitches. I'm going to knit my next two stitches for my left knitting needle, then the ones going in front, again, it's a white box, so I'm going to knit those two stitches. Then to finish off here, I'm going to pearl six. That's going to be the repeat. I continue working all the way across this round six. Now, if you look at the rounds that happened after round six, something like Round eight here, these are the same cable stitches just placed in slightly different locations that you had down here in Round four. You work those again on round eight, then again on round 12, then again on round 16. Same thing goes for the ones we were just working. They appear in round six. The exact same thing happens in slightly different locations on round ten, 14, and 18. And just keep in mind that after you work each cable round, you're just working one round where it's going to be a different combination of pearls and knits. I'm going to continue working all the way up through round 19. Then I'm going to come back and show you what's special about round 20, where we have to adjust where stitch markers are in order to be able to work this large cable stitch. 5. Rounds 20 - 39: Here's my work so far and I've now made it all the way up through round 19. Next up, we have round 20, and what you're going to notice is that round 20 has some blank spaces at the beginning. The reason for these blank spaces at the beginning, and again, it's four stitches, is that the cable we're going to want to do crosses between the repeats of the pattern. We want to use the last four stitches of one of our repeats and work those together with a cable of the first four stitches of the next repeat. So when we start off this round, what we're actually going to do is we're going to take our first four stitches. Let me pass my stitch marker first. I'm going to take my first four stitches and I'm just going to slip them over to my left knitting needle. That's just a special thing for the beginning of the round. The rest of the round, wherever we have one repeat that ends and the next repeat that begins, we're going to do a cable stitch across this stitch marker. Let me show you what I mean there. First, I'm going to work all these pearl stitches across the center here. Now I'm up to where there are four stitches remaining before my stitch marker. I'm going to cable the next eight stitches together. The cable I'm going to do, I'm going to take the first four stitches and hold them on a cable needle in the front of my work. I'm also going to take off my stitch marker here for a moment. Then I'm going to knit the next four stitches for my left hand knitting needle. Before I knit the four stitches being held on my cable needle, I'm going to replace my stitch marker, and now I'm going to knit the four stitches being held on my cable needle. Now again, where I'm up to is now that I finish that whole cable, I'm going to pearl all the way across until four stitches before my stitch marker again. I'll show it to you one more time here. Now I'm up to four stitches before my stitch marker. I'm going to work the cable again. I'm going to take the first four stitches, hold them on my cable needle in the front of my work, take off my stitch marker, knit the next four stitches on my left knitting needle. Replace my stitch marker and then knit the four stitches being held on my cable needle. Now again, I'm just going to continue pearling until I'm four stitches before my next stitch marker, and I'm going to cable. I'm going to continue doing this all the way across my round until I get to four stitches before my beginning of the round marker. At that location, I'll come back and I'll show you again how we're going to start off or how we're going to end this round and begin the next one. Now, I'm back at four stitches before my beginning of the round and here we're going to work the exact same cable. This round is actually going to finish basically four stitches into the next round. First up, same exact cable as before. I'm going to take my first four stitches, hold them on my cable needle in the front of my work, take off my beginning of the round stitch marker, knit the next four stitches, my left knitting needle. Replace my beginning of the round stitch marker and then knit the four stitches being held on my cable needle. The round we just worked is we just worked round 20 and I'm going to highlight that one now. And where round 20 technically finishes, is it finishes four stitches into the next round. When I look at the next round on my cable chart in Round 21, it starts off with four knit stitches. Those four knit stitches are going to be the ones we just worked. So you're going to have to skip those on the first repeat. Where am I going to jump into the pattern? I'm going to jump into the pattern right here on Stitch five with pearling. Again, for this first repeat, we're going to skip over the first four stitches, skip over these first four and just go right into the pearling. I'm going to bring my yarn to the front and pearl all the way across these center stitches. Then at the end here, I'm going to knit four before my stitch marker. Pass my stitch marker, and now for the next repeat, I do have those four stitches. I'm going to work the kitting of the first four, pearling across the center. And then knitting the last four before my next stitch marker. That repeat, I can continue working all the way across the round. It's just that first little iteration across the beginning of the round stitch marker where you've just skip those first four stitches. Beyond this point, looking at rounds 22, all the way up through 39, these are all cable symbols that you've seen before on the lower half of the pattern. You just want to be careful because now they've switched sides. For instance, when we took four on our cable needle, held it in front, that's now switched over here from the left side of the pattern to the right side of the pattern and same thing where we held two on our cable needle and back. That's now switched from the right side to the left side. Same thing with these four stitch cables, they've switched sides. Pay attention to that as you're going up through the pattern, and I'll come back and I'll show you how I finish off with the ribbing repeat row and the cast off all the way up here at the top. 6. Finishing: And now I've gone all the way through Round 39 and I'm back at the ribbing repeat row. For this one, there are no cable stitches. We're back to just knit one pearl one, all the way across the round, you're going to want to repeat this for the same number of rows you did down at the bottom for your cast on. You cast on and then you worked some ribbing repeat rows. You want to work that exact same number across this top etch. First, let me get to my stitch marker here. Again, this is just combinations of the white boxes and gray boxes. It's going to kit one pearl one all the way across the round and repeat that for the same number you did for the cast on itch. After working my ribbing, the last step is just to cast off. I'm going to remove my stitch markers as I work across this last round. When I cast off, I like to do so in pattern. What that means is I'm going to work each stitch as it was worked below it. For example, I'm going to start off by knitting the first stitch and then I'm going to pearl the next stitch. Then the way I cast off is just a simple cast off method where I take the previous stitch using my left knitting needle, I pick it up and I slip it up over and off. I just cast off one stitch. Now the repeat begins, and this is where you want to just pay attention to what the pattern was for that stitch previously. Next up, I'm going to knit one. Then I'm going to slip the previous stitch up over and off. Then I have a pearl stitch, so I'm going to pearl one. I'm going to slip the previous stitch up over and off, back to the knit stitch. I'm going to knit one, slip the previous stitch up over and off. I'm going to continue doing this all the way across the round, again, removing the stitch markers as I go. Now for this last stitch, I just loosen it up a little bit, so it becomes larger. Now I'm going to cut my yarn leaving about an eight inch tail. And then I thread the yarn through that remaining stitch. Now, what I'm going to do real quick is I'm going to weave in my ends and then I'll show you how I block my project. For blocking, what I have in front of me is I have a bowl of water and it's just lukewarm temperature and I have a little bit of soap in there. I use just a little bit of the Dn dish soap. I have a towel that I can use to roll my finished project up in to get the excess water out, and then I have one of my projects here. All I'm going to do is I'm going to take this and I'm going to submerge it in the water. Now I'm going to leave that there for about 15 minutes. Now that it's had a while to soak, I'm just going to pick it up and try and squeeze out as much of the excess water as I can. Then I'm going to lay it on my towel and I'm going to roll it up in the towel. Then I'm just going to squeeze to get as much of that excess water out as I can. Once I've gotten as much of the excess water out as I can, you can see I got quite a bit out, I'm going to take this and I position it exactly how I want it to dry. I stretch it out anywhere it needs to be stretched out. And now I'm going to take this and I'm going to lay it flat to dry. I have a drying rack with a mesh bottom, so I use that. You can also use they make special drying mats for knitting that are those foam flooring boards. You can use those as well. Just anything that you can use to dry this on that has a little bit of breathability. So I'm going to lay this flat to dry, and then I'll come back and I'll show you the finished product. Now that my projects are all dry, I just wanted to pop back on here and show you what they look like. This is my worsted weight version after I've blocked it and I really like the size of the worsted weight version. I'll show you it on here. So it really makes a nice, perfect little size for a single loop cow. The bulky weight version is just a little bit bigger or quite a bit bit bigger here. So this is my bulky weight version with the four repeats, and I love how this one turned out, as well. If you have any comments, be sure to leave them in the questions portion of this video. And I hope to see you in my next Skill Share tutorial. I'll see you next time.