Textile Structure
how cloth is put together
Concept

Short-row — where it appears

A knitted row worked across only part of the needles before turning back, so that some columns gain courses and others do not. A wedge of short rows turns a knitted tube, as at a sock's heel, or closes a knitted disc.

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

A short-row heel on 64 needles, laid flat. The 32 heel stitches of a 64-needle sock, each column drawn as the courses it was worked in during the short rows: nought at the heel's two edges, rising by four courses a stitch to 42 across the 11 stitches left at the turn. The cells are drawn at the knit's own aspect, a wale 1.2791 times as wide as a course is tall. The instep's 32 columns beside it are worked in none of the short rows. Down the back line the extra length turns the tube through 92.4 degrees, and the whole trapezoid is 65.6 per cent of the fabric a true bend of that angle would need.

A heel turns a right angle because of the loop

A sock's heel is knitted in short rows on half the needles until a third are left, then back out again. Down the back line that adds a length of courses, and a tube's back line longer than its front by that much has turned through π times two thirds over the loop's own aspect — 93.8 degrees, on any needle count, in any yarn. The trade's third is the loop's shape in disguise. What the rule does not do is make a bend: the heel supplies two thirds of the fabric a true right angle needs, and every missing stitch is on its sides.

knits · Shaping Where a knitted disc is flat. The circumference a knitted disc grows per unit of radius, as a share of the 2π a flat disc needs, against the loop's aspect, for 4 wedges (flat at 1.2732), 10 every 2 rounds (flat at 1.2566). Wedges of short rows fall as the aspect rises and rounds with increases rise. The shaded band is the aspect of plain knit between its dry-relaxed value, 1.2500, and its wet-relaxed value, 1.2927.

A knitted disc is flat at one shape of loop

A disc lies flat only if its circumference grows by exactly 2π per unit of radius, and a knitted disc's growth is a count of loops in one direction over a count in the other. So it is flat at one value of the loop's aspect and no other. Knitted sideways in wedges of short rows the growth falls as the loop gets wider; knitted outward in rounds it rises. Four wedges and ten increases every two rounds are each flat at an aspect inside the range plain knit moves through when it is washed — and they cross it in opposite directions.

knits · Shaping

Named alongside it

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

CourseLoop aspectMunden constantsShapingWaleGaussian curvatureHeelRelaxationSeamlessTube

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