Converting patterns for Portuguese-style knitting: a tutorial, part 1
A few years ago I wrote a post about converting increases and decreases from German or English-style knitting to Portuguese-style knitting. Do you need to do that? Not really, there is nothing to stop you from just going ahead and knit a pattern exactly as it's written. Then, why would you want to do that? Because most patterns written for German or English-style knitting include as much knit stitches and as little purl stitches as possible, since the former are much easier to work than the latter when you keep your yarn behind the needles. On the other hand, when working in Portuguese-style, you keep your yarn in front of the needles and thus you would like to purl as much as possible. The best example of this is, of course, garter stitch, as used in the microplastic ban pattern. There are two ways of converting this pattern to Portuguese-style:
But, what happens if you add a little bit of simple lace to this pattern? Lace can be very, very tricky. One thing that you can always be sure of is that the straight-forward conversion, where you use the stitch dictionary and invert the order of stitches, always works. This is always the second safest way to make sure you do not mess up your pattern. The safest one being working the pattern exactly as is written.
What if you still want to be stubbornly clever? Let us give an example of a pattern to be more concrete. Suppose you want to add some very simple lace to the microplastic ban pattern. How would you go about doing it? Now that is a interesting question and this post is already too long. So I will leave it for next week.
Of course there are a lot more stitch than the ones you find in this dictionary, but, as far as I can remember, they do not have a different abbreviation. If you want to know how to, for example, work a lifted increase from the purl side instead of the knit side, use a good reference book that includes such instructions (every knitter should have one) or look it up online.
- Straight-forward conversion: use the stitch dictionary and invert the order of stitches. Then,
Increase row: k2, yo, knit to end.
Decrease row: k1, k2tog, k2tog, knit to last 2 sts, Lk, k2.
Convert to
Increase row: purl to last 2 sts, yo, p2.
Decrease row: p2, Lp, purl to last 5 sts, p2tog, p2tog, p1.
- The "clever" conversion: in the above lines, working the increases and decreases at the beginning, instead of the end, of the row makes it easier not to forget them. There is actually no reason you cannot do the same in Portuguese-style. In this case the conversion becomes:
Increase row: p2, yo, purl to end.
Decrease row: p1, p2tog, p2tog, purl to last 2 sts, Lp, p2.
Let me clarify the reason why the order of the stitches is inverted when converting to Portuguese-style knitting. This becomes obvious if you actually knit and compare samples, but I will put it explicitly to save you the trouble. Let's start with the simplest of examples: stockinette stitch. You knit the right side from left to right and purl the wrong side from right to left (as seen from the right side). This is because right and left are inverted on the wrong side, so you think you are knitting right-to-left, but, as seen from the right side, you are actually going in the opposite direction. When converting knit stitches to purl ones and vice-versa, you are effectively swapping the right and wrong sides and hence inverting the direction of your knitting. This is even more obvious when knitting in the round. Of course, you don't need to do any conversion, stockinette being the best example of a stitch that does not benefit from conversion. But, when you do convert—and garter stitch, as used in the aforementioned pattern, is the best example of a stitch that greatly benefits from conversion,—you must invert the order of the stitches if you want your pattern to look the same on the right side. What happens if you don't? If all your stitches are symmetric, you obtain a perfect mirror image of your pattern (be careful when knitting letters in colour work!). If some of your stitches are slanted, like most increase and decrease stitches, you will get an imperfect mirror image with wonky looking stitches that should have been slanted in the opposite direction.
Yes, you are absolutely right if you are thinking that it's not the same working a p2tog in the beginning of the row, as you do in the "clever" conversion, or, instead, in the end of the row. In the the latter case, the p2tog is leaning against the edge of the fabric (which is slanted to the left) while in the former case, the p2tog is leaning along the edge (i.e. to the right). The difference between the two will be visible at very close inspection. To be absolutely precise, any conversion that is not the straight-forward one will have different results. The question is, are you happy with this difference?
Yes, you are absolutely right if you are thinking that it's not the same working a p2tog in the beginning of the row, as you do in the "clever" conversion, or, instead, in the end of the row. In the the latter case, the p2tog is leaning against the edge of the fabric (which is slanted to the left) while in the former case, the p2tog is leaning along the edge (i.e. to the right). The difference between the two will be visible at very close inspection. To be absolutely precise, any conversion that is not the straight-forward one will have different results. The question is, are you happy with this difference?
But, what happens if you add a little bit of simple lace to this pattern? Lace can be very, very tricky. One thing that you can always be sure of is that the straight-forward conversion, where you use the stitch dictionary and invert the order of stitches, always works. This is always the second safest way to make sure you do not mess up your pattern. The safest one being working the pattern exactly as is written.
What if you still want to be stubbornly clever? Let us give an example of a pattern to be more concrete. Suppose you want to add some very simple lace to the microplastic ban pattern. How would you go about doing it? Now that is a interesting question and this post is already too long. So I will leave it for next week.
A simple stitch dictionary
| knit | purl |
| k2tog | p2tog |
| ssk | ssp |
| kfb | pfb |
| ktbl | ptbl |
| yo | yo |
This seems like an *awful* lot of work! I emailed Andrea Wong, who originally named it "Portuguese style knitting," to ask her if patterns need to be "translated," and she said: "The answer is no, you do not have to translate anything to work any pattern you want." Is this just a convenience, then, in order to have more purl stitches because they're more comfortable using PK?
ReplyDeleteIf you mean that reading and understanding my post is an awful lot of work, I feel bad about it, but I have to admit I'm a much better knitter than a writer and rereading my post I can see how it can be confusing for someone else. If you mean converting patterns is a lot of work, not really, it's actually quite simple once you get the hang of it. It's my instructions which may be unhelpful. I often think of fully rewriting these posts, but I have pretty much abandoned blogging for lack of time.
DeleteAs for your question about the need to translate patterns to Portuguese-style knitting. My answer is right on the 1st paragraph of the post (and if I may say so myself, I think that paragraph is easy enough to understand). Like Andrea told you, and I said above: *in principle*, you don't need to translate anything, but, *in practice*, you will *absolutely* want to unless you're a total masochist. This is not true for all patterns (for example stockinette knit flat or standard ribbing), but it's true in most cases, so that, unless you've got access to Portuguese-style patterns, knowing to translate a pattern becomes an essential skill for any Portuguese-style knitter.
Being Portuguese, I know that most Portuguese knitters know how to translate patterns, and do it whenever they wish to knit a foreign pattern. They started doing it decades ago when access to foreign knitting magazines became common. Today's access to thousands of patterns on Ravelry has further increased the popularity of foreign patterns in Portugal and the need to translate them.