How to read a chart 101

Did you know you follow charts from right to left in knitting? I didn't. Think back to my lacy shrug, the one I knitted and unknitted several times before throwing down the needles and giving in. I was reading the chart wrong the whole time. No wonder it never looked right.

I'm a journalist by trade, which means I read and write a lot (obviously, really), so everything I do is left to right. It's how I think - I'm right-brained so gravitate left. But knitting doesn't work that way. It took a lot for me to work this out, and I'm still not entirely sure I'm there, but knitting goes right to left. It only seems like it goes the other way because I'm right-handed, but think about it: when knitting a right-side row you're actually going from the right-hand side of the piece to the left (ignore that tricksy fact that the knitting goes from your left-hand needle to the right one, and look at the actual fabric).

But it gets even more confusing because now swap to the wrong side: you're still going left needle to right, and it still appears that the fabric is building right to left. But that's because you're looking at the back! Hold the piece up and look at the front - the fabric is growing left to right.

And this is how we read charts. Obviously. All right-side rows (odd numbers in my experience, but I don't know if that's always the case) should be read from right to left. Wrong-side rows are read left to right. But these often don't have a pattern, in which case they don't matter.

In fact the chart should be a visual representation of what your knitting will look like. If \ is a left-leaning increase and O a yarn over, then your knitting should have a nice left increase and a nice hole wherever those symbols appear in the chart. Simple, see?

Well, it is when you know how.

But where does this leave me and my lacy shrug? Shamefully, it leaves my shrug at the bottom of my knitting bag and me doing very nicely thank you with a cabled tunic. I need to undo the rest of the lace rows of the shrug before I can apply my new knowledge, and quite frankly I can't face it at the moment. But the nights are getting lighter and the weather warmer and soon I'll be able to sit in the garden and knit. And that's when I'll break out the shrug. Honest.