Bohus a-round, anyone?

No, I haven't forgotten that I was going to talk to you about Knitting Camp. But I thought I'd do a quick post on a topic that I've been meaning to do for a while. It is related to Camp in that Elizabeth Zimmerman and Meg Swansen were/are major proponents of circular knitting and this is a flat to circular knitting conversion.

Many people are puzzled by the idea of doing a Bohus pattern in the round. The patterns in the kits from Solveig Gustafsson are written for knitting back and forth after the yoke is completed. I have corresponded with many people who are stymied by the concept of the short rows that are used to raise the back neck and create a better fit. I thought a couple of visuals would remove this confusion once and for all.

Here is a diagram of the way the short rows are described in the pattern. You can see that they are only on the front. This is because the partial rows are only in the front. The short rows gradually increase with each pair to go from the front armhole to just short of the center front. This raises the back neck and provides a gradual slope to the front neck so it fits better. There are no short rows on the back or sleeves because there are no partial rows there. They are all full rows across the entire width.Now here is the same set of short rows when the garment is done in the round. Essentially, one knits to just past the front armhole (or past the previous turning point), turns and purls back around to the corresponding point on the other side. This is repeated till all the short rows are completed. The turning points are exactly the same for the back-and-forth version and the in-the-round version.Note: my diagrams are not to scale.

More later when I have a bit more time.