Fudge Friday: Pattern Plus Stitches

Pickford, M. a free sock pattern in my Ravelry store.

At the beginning of some stitch patterns, right before the written instructions, it will say “multiple of 5 sts + 3” and you’ll wonder “What the heck does that mean?”

Those + stitches balance the pattern so that it begins and ends in the same way. Even if you don’t read charts, let’s take a look at this one.

A chart with plus stitches.

The red border around the first 10 stitches shows the pattern repeat. Those 10 sts are repeated over and over until the last 3 sts. Then stitches 11, 12 and 13 are worked. You can see that if we ended on stitch 10, the pattern wouldn’t be balanced. The way the pattern started wouldn’t look the same as the way the pattern ended.

For those of you still a bit confused (because of the chart), let’s look at the written instructions for Row 1:

*k1, p1, k1, yo, ssk, p5; rep from * to last 3 sts, end k1, p1, k1.

You can see here that if we ended on the last p5, the pattern would begin with k1, p1, k1. If we add on those 3 sts to the end, the pattern is now balanced, beginning and ending with k1, p1, k1.

What does this mean for you, the knitter? This means that we need to have a multiple of 10 stitches + 3 on our needles. Does 90 stitches work with this pattern? No! We need 93. When I first started knitting I assumed this meant I needed a multiple of 13 sts on my needles… 10 + 3. But multiples of 13 don’t work. For example, if I had 52 sts (13 x 4), I would be one stitch short. I need a multiple of 10 and then add 3 to that. So 53 sts would work.

However, plus stitches only appear when knitting something flat in rows. When you knit in rounds, the plus stitches need to disappear. Let’s take a look at the same chart in the round.

This is the actual chart I used for Pickford, M.

You can see here that the plus stitches” have disappeared. This is because if we end our round with a k1, p1, k1, there will be 2 repeats of k1, p1, k1 - one at the beginning of the round, one at the end. Instead, to knit this same pattern in the round, we eliminate the plus stitches. The pattern now becomes a multiple of 10 stitches, and for the non-chart readers, the instructions for Round 1 will read as:

*k1, p1, k1, yo, ssk, p5; rep from *

Any multiple of 10 stitches knitted in the round will work - 40, 50…300!

You may ask why you’d want to even know this. Well, I find that after knitters have been at it awhile, they often start to play around with design. Incorporating a pattern stitch into a plain stockinette design is sometimes the simplest way. Knowing how to change a stitch pattern from a knitting worked flat in rows to knitting worked in the round (or vice-versa) will give you the confidence to do this.