My new pattern The Light Summer Tank is a pretty straight forward knit. Never the less I thought it might be nice to have a collection of the techniques used in the pattern as a reference point if any kind of questions should arise during knitting time. Before I start a project I am usually very patient with my planning, but once I am off I really want to just stay in my knit flow. In my mind having to stop to google and youtube can become somewhat of a roadblock. If you are a beginner, even coming up with the right search terms can be kind of a pain. So i put together this nifty little list of links to great tutorials. Most of them have both videos and written descriptions with images. When I learn a technique I tend to quickly skim the written descriptions, because I have the patience of a 4 year old, but I know a lot of people love the vids. What is your preferred way to learn new knitting techniques?
Techniques used in the pattern
○ PKFB – Modified KFB
Some words and general neurosis concerning the PKFB (purlless knit front and back) in the pattern.
Did I make that name up? Yup… Why? well just to be clear I didn’t make up the technique itself, it is around and well used. It is usually called something like “KFB without the purl bump” or “Barless KFB”. I find both pretty hard to use effectively in a pattern. I could have just simplified and used a regular KFB, but I don’t want to cheat people out of a neater result just because it uses a lesser known technique. So since I couldn’t find usage of this technique in any other patterns, I just decided to give it the shortest possible abbreviation I could come up with. Purlless Knit Front and Back – PKFB. Alongside a description in the abbreviations list it would be easier to get or at least easy to search for.
My overly analytical brain is still a little annoyed with this, since when you knit the PKFB you simply knit the front leg and then slip the back leg of the same stitch. A more apt name might have been something like Knit Front, Slip Back – KFSB but I think that might have been too hard for people to search for as it differs quite a bit from the descriptions I have been able to find of it. So yeah this is the dialogue I have been having in my head. Quite excessive when you consider the fact that this technique is used exactly once in the pattern. Ha! What do you think? Am I over thinking this? Is it ok to come up with new abbreviations? Who even came up with those things in the first place? Even more importantly is there an already approved abbreviation of this that I have over looked? I am so up for being enlightened if that is the case.
Techniques for the Light Summer Tank
I only really skimmed the description of the PKFB increase you linked to, but I think it might be the same (just executed a slightly different way) as the inv-r / inv-l increase used in Michele Wang’s Stonecutter Pattern. I have no idea if this is a standard abbreviation or not but you might want to look into it.