Knitting schematics scare you? Well, they scared me also. You have to calculate a lot: how many stitches and over how many rows etc etc. Seems complicated. So until now I did not really tried any complicated knitting project. Until the baby thing. How can I not make some nice baby clothes for the little one? So, I said to myself: "How hard can it be?". I mean, I am working toward getting a PhD in quantitative social sciences and I am using some pretty hardcore statistics, sure I can figure out how to make / use a knitting schematic.
So, this is the story and the result of my first try at making and using a schematic for a baby vest. I learned 2 important lessons: make a swatch to figure out the gauge and use a spreadsheet type of file to draw the schematic and calculate. The file I made with an open source software (Open Document Spreadsheet) that anyone can use - is free! I used only basic math formulas that are included in the document. As always, the document can be downloaded from the Patterns section of this site. Let me know if you find it useful!
But lets see an example from my calculations and how you can adapt to your specific project. My gauge is 15 stitches per 10 cm and I needed to figure out how many stitches I need to cast on to cover 59 cm. During primary school I learned to solve this in the following easy way:
So, this is the story and the result of my first try at making and using a schematic for a baby vest. I learned 2 important lessons: make a swatch to figure out the gauge and use a spreadsheet type of file to draw the schematic and calculate. The file I made with an open source software (Open Document Spreadsheet) that anyone can use - is free! I used only basic math formulas that are included in the document. As always, the document can be downloaded from the Patterns section of this site. Let me know if you find it useful!
But lets see an example from my calculations and how you can adapt to your specific project. My gauge is 15 stitches per 10 cm and I needed to figure out how many stitches I need to cast on to cover 59 cm. During primary school I learned to solve this in the following easy way:
And the above is the formula that I fed to my spreadsheet. Now, say that you use another type of yarn so you will have other gauge, all you need to do is to change the numbers in the spreadsheet (or, of course, you can calculate by hand). Simple, no?