Many knitters are familiar with short rows. They are generally used for shaping, such for the heel of a sock, adding in bust darts, or shaping shoulders. There are lots of short row shaping tutorials out there – this isn't one of them.

Instead, this is a tutorial for another use for short rows. You can also use them to create crazy stripes and blocks of colour in your knitting. Last winter at a guild meeting I saw a woman wearing a vest done with this technique. When I was looking for ideas for one of my pieces of Noel's Blanket, that vest came to mind, and I thought it might be fun to do. I tried to find information on it, both in books and using google, but to no avail. Not knowing the name of the technique didn't help. So I did what any adventurous knitter would do – I played around with the yarn and needles until I figured it out for myself. I knew what I wanted, I just didn't know how to describe it. If you know if this technique has a name, please let me know. Or at least tell me how you might describe this, so that perhaps others searching may come upon this page.

One other thing before I start – for the blanket piece, I used the Japanese Short Row method of dealing avoiding holes, because I wanted to learn that too. This is an alternative to the Wrapped Stitch method (which is probably the most common), or the Yarn Over method. For details on each of these, click on the links above. Nona has great tutorials on them. For this tutorial, I'm using the Wrapped Stitch method, since that's the one most people are probably familiar with.

Since I didn't take pictures along the way when I was making the blanket piece, yesterday I knit up a little sample so that I could show you how I did it. Here's the finished sample:

(The sample looks a bit misshapen – that is only because the side is curled in. It is actually a rectangle.)

As with short rows for shaping, you knit part way across, turn, and work back. As you keep doing this, it creates some areas that have more rows, and some that have fewer. In order to keep a flat piece of knitting, you eventually need to fill in those "missing" rows, so that there are the same number of rows across the piece. In this sample, there are 22 rows (not including the garter stitch). On the left there are 4 rows of blue, 2 white, 12 red, 4 purple (= 22). On the right, there are 10 blue, 2 white, 2 red, 8 purple (=22).

When I was figuring out how to do this, the main problem I had was keeping track of how many rows I had, so that it would all come out even in the end. I started colouring the rows in on graph paper as I knit them, using pencil crayons. For this sample, I used an Excel chart. Here's the final chart:

 Here it is, step by step:

Cast on 20 stitches. (I started with a few rows of garter stitch, only to make it easier to photograph. I did not include these rows on the chart). Knit 2 rows in stockinette stitch, and mark these rows on your chart.

 Knit 15 stitches, wrap and turn, purl back

 Continue like this, stopping 5 stitches short each time (10 and 5) 

 Now, knit across, picking up the wraps as you get to them, and then purl back.

Note that when you colour in this row, you need to follow along the stitches as they are there, colouring in just the stitches that appear above the existing stitches.

Now, switch colours, and knit across, purl back

Switch colours again (to red), knit across  (but don't purl back)

 Now we're going to start filling in some of the "empty spaces" with red. This is when it starts to really help to colour in each row as you do it.

Purl 10, w&t (wrap and turn), knit back. P 8, w&t, knit back

Continue like this, to create a red wedge (p5, w&t, k to end; p3, w&t, k to end, p1, w&t, k to end)

Purl across, picking up the wraps as you come to them:

Now we'll use the purple to make the final wedge. In order to make sure that the piece lies flat at the end, you need to make sure you fill in all of the spaces by the time you finish.

K 19, w&t, p to end; K 17, w&t, p to end; K12, w&t, p to end 

See why it helps so much to colour each row as you go? The knitted sample looks like you're straight across, when in fact there are more stitches on the right than on the left. To fix this, you'll have to get back over to the other side:

K across, picking up wraps as you go.

To fill in the last bit, knit 15, w&t, p back, then k across, picking up wraps as you come to them.

And that's it! To recap, here is the order you made all the rows:

When I was doing this, I didn't plan what I wanted it to look like. I decided as I went when to switch colours and how big of a wedge to do each time. I suppose you could plan it out ahead of time, but it's kind of fun just playing it by ear. Here's the piece I did for the blanket, using this technique.

 Please let me know if you find this tutorial helpful. If any of it is confusing, let me know and I'll try to explain it better. And as I mentioned earlier, if this technique has a name that you know of, please do let me know. Alternatively, if you were looking for this, what search terms might you use?

I can't figure out how to add comments to pages (even though "allow comments" is checked), so if you have any comments, please leave them on this post. Thanks!