The Knitting Fiend

Dear Experienced Knitters,

I started knitting last December, working on lots of cotton dishcloths, 2 scarves, a pair of socks, and now, a baby hooded poncho from the Lion Brand site.

http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/kjif-babyPoncho.html

I’m just about finished with the back side of the poncho, but I’m concerned because the back horizontal edge is not even with the front edge. It looks as though I knitted it on a very slight bias. Is this gauge related?

Answer: Probably not.

First, if I examine the Lion Brand picture carefully, it looks like the knitting slants. This suggests their poncho also biases.

I then looked up the pattern stitch, and noticed that there is something that might cause biasing in this stitch. To check my suspicion, I knit a swatch repeating rows 1 and 2. (I skipped rows 3 and 4, because the biasing should be the same for a pattern using 1-4 as for one using 1 & 2 only.)

PATTERN STITCH:
Note: Count sts at end of Rows 2 and 4.
Row 1 (RS): K into front and back of each st across (doubling amount of sts).
Row 2: K2tog, *p2tog, k2tog; rep from * across.
Row 3: Rep Row 1.
Row 4: P2tog, *k2tog, p2tog; rep from * across. Rep Rows 1-4 for pat st.

When I knit row 1, I knit into the front first, and then the back. I noticed while knitting this that the bottom part of the stitch did not twist, but the top twisted strongly counter clockwise when viewed from the top. When you finish the row, you have a whole bunch of stitches twisting counter clockwise.

I suspected biasing might occur because those stitches then lean in an attempt to untwist. I knit several rows and took a picture; notice the swatch to the right leans.

I have two theories for how to avoid biasing. First, try knitting into the back first, then knit into the front. This might not bias, because this order seems to result in the lower part of the stitch twisting clockwise, and the top part twisting counter clockwise. Theoretically, equal numbers of twists in both directions should fix things. If this doesn’t work, try alternating: knit into the back then front for one stitch, then knit into the front then back for the next stitch.

If it doesn’t work, well, it was worth a try!

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After note: Mom, the co-designer of our baby poncho quickly emailed to ask about the comparative dimensions of the Lion Brand poncho and our baby poncho pattern. The dimensions for my poncho are very close to Lion Brand’s poncho dimenions. However, I added a slit because I was afraid moms will have to be way to cautious carefully sliding a 8″-10″ opening over a baby head. If you are knitting a baby poncho, do consider adding a neck slit to make the opening larger. Simply widening the head might be a problem because the poncho might slide off the baby’s shoulders. You can see my suggested slit sizes by visiting my baby poncho pattern generator.