Paired increases in the round: a comparison
I recently have been doing some experimenting with paired increases for a top-down raglan with sleeves in reverse stockinette (I'm knitting Stephanie Japel's Cable-Down Raglan, from Interweave Knits Spring 2007). The pattern calls for increasing by knitting through the front and back, then purling through the front and back. On my first go, I was getting holes in the purl side of the pair, and asked several people I know who make a lot of top-down raglans what increases they use. I got a lot of conflicting and (to me) odd advice about what would fix the problem, and everybody was convinced that their method worked best, so I decided to just swatch it and see what worked best, rather than knit several rows of the sweater as a swatch and get it wrong again.
I made a swatch that started out as 60 cast-on stitches. After a couple rows of stockinette, I made a 5x5 rib to put my increases into, and placed markers where the pattern shifted from stockinette to reverse stockinette. I did ten rows for each marker, increasing every other row, then reversed the rib for a few rows before doing the same increases while twisting the first purl stitch every time I changed from knit to purl.
I've got photos of the swatches below the cut, name and notes below. Although some people have their pet names for increases, I didn't name them anything but just described what I was doing as a name. Remember, the swatches are all the same increase all the way up, but the upper portion is purled through the back loop to add twist whenever the patten goes from knit to purl.
half-hitch, reversed on purl side
Here I used the basic half-hitch increase, looped the normal way on the knit side (right half) and reversed on the purl side (left half). As you can see, this leads to a hole on both sides of the increase.
Purling through the back loop had basically no effect on this, but did make the fabric ripply.
half-hitch, same on both sides
It didn't seem to make a difference whether I reversed the half-hitch. Still got a hole.
half-hitch, reversed on purl side, purl tbl for next stitch
One person suggested I try purling through the back loop of the purl stitch next to the increase. That just made a big mess. Purling the increase through the back loop on the work even row made the mess even bigger.
lift bar between stitches to increase
Lifting the bar between stitches is basically the same thing as the half-hitch increase, so no surprise that it also had lots of holes.
lift loop of stitch from row below to increase
Lifting the stitch from the row below to increase made a lot of looseness around the increase, and holes on both sides. Purling this through the back loop made it looser, still.
kfb, then pfb
I still got a hole with this method, but when I purled through the back loop on the work even rows (upper part), the loop closed up quite nicely. Yay!
Not surprisingly, this is the method the pattern errata recommends. With the addition of a knit stitch between the two increases, there will be a nice line of knit stitches down the "seam."
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One thing I would rethink is the yarn I used for the swatch, which is Microspun. Not only do I not care for the way it tends to twist and untwist itself randomly as you knit, but because it won't block nicely, the knitting looks much worse than it would have had I had some better yarn on hand. I did what I usually do to even out synthetics (gave it a thorough stretching and whacking), which did help even out the tension a bit but not enough to make it nice. A thorough machine washing would have helped, but I had little tags labeling the increases on there that I didn't want to lose or destroy. So I apologize for how weird some of the knitting looks.
I made a swatch that started out as 60 cast-on stitches. After a couple rows of stockinette, I made a 5x5 rib to put my increases into, and placed markers where the pattern shifted from stockinette to reverse stockinette. I did ten rows for each marker, increasing every other row, then reversed the rib for a few rows before doing the same increases while twisting the first purl stitch every time I changed from knit to purl.
I've got photos of the swatches below the cut, name and notes below. Although some people have their pet names for increases, I didn't name them anything but just described what I was doing as a name. Remember, the swatches are all the same increase all the way up, but the upper portion is purled through the back loop to add twist whenever the patten goes from knit to purl.
half-hitch, reversed on purl side
Here I used the basic half-hitch increase, looped the normal way on the knit side (right half) and reversed on the purl side (left half). As you can see, this leads to a hole on both sides of the increase.
Purling through the back loop had basically no effect on this, but did make the fabric ripply.
half-hitch, same on both sides
It didn't seem to make a difference whether I reversed the half-hitch. Still got a hole.
half-hitch, reversed on purl side, purl tbl for next stitch
One person suggested I try purling through the back loop of the purl stitch next to the increase. That just made a big mess. Purling the increase through the back loop on the work even row made the mess even bigger.
lift bar between stitches to increase
Lifting the bar between stitches is basically the same thing as the half-hitch increase, so no surprise that it also had lots of holes.
lift loop of stitch from row below to increase
Lifting the stitch from the row below to increase made a lot of looseness around the increase, and holes on both sides. Purling this through the back loop made it looser, still.
kfb, then pfb
I still got a hole with this method, but when I purled through the back loop on the work even rows (upper part), the loop closed up quite nicely. Yay!
Not surprisingly, this is the method the pattern errata recommends. With the addition of a knit stitch between the two increases, there will be a nice line of knit stitches down the "seam."
-----
One thing I would rethink is the yarn I used for the swatch, which is Microspun. Not only do I not care for the way it tends to twist and untwist itself randomly as you knit, but because it won't block nicely, the knitting looks much worse than it would have had I had some better yarn on hand. I did what I usually do to even out synthetics (gave it a thorough stretching and whacking), which did help even out the tension a bit but not enough to make it nice. A thorough machine washing would have helped, but I had little tags labeling the increases on there that I didn't want to lose or destroy. So I apologize for how weird some of the knitting looks.