Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Knit — where it appears

A fabric of one thread bent into loops, each held by the loop below it. That is what buys its extension and its recovery, and it is also why one broken loop lets the fabric run course by course.

Named by 2 essays across 2 fields — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

half-cardigan as an array. One cell per needle per course, over 2 repeats each way. K knits a new loop and casts the old one off, T tucks the yarn into the loop below without casting off, M misses the needle and floats past it. The margins carry the two conditions: a wale with no K in it never casts off, and a course with no K in it is never caught by anything. Both hold here.

Knit, tuck and miss

A weave is a matrix over two symbols and a weft knit is a matrix over three. The site's central question survives the translation intact: a weave falls apart when its above-and-below relation is disconnected, and a knit falls apart when a needle never knits.

knits · Stitch notation A knit's dimensions come from its loop length. Courses and wales per centimetre against loop length, for a plain weft-knitted fabric in one relaxation state. Neither axis carries a yarn count, a fibre or a machine gauge, and that is the finding: every plain knit measured sits on these two curves whatever it is made of.

A knit's dimensions come from its loop

A relaxed plain knit's courses, wales and stitch density depend on the loop length and on nothing else — not the yarn count, not the fibre, not the machine gauge. The constants are measured rather than derived, and the interesting thing about the published set is that it does not quite satisfy its own arithmetic.

finishing · Knit geometry

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

CourseWaleCensusHeld loopIntegrityKnit geometryLadderingLoop lengthMissRelaxationStitch densityStitch notation

All concepts