Knitting from french patterns: increases and decreases

Filed under: Crochet,french,translation — March 2, 2012 @ 3:53 pm

French knitting patterns (and crochet as well) are usually nowhere as detailed as english or american ones. In many instances, the knitter will be told simply to “increase” or “decrease”, with no mention of which type of increase/decrease to use: knitters are meant to use their favorite method I guess. ;-)
make one increase, augmentation en franā§ais tricot
I thought I’d write more details about some of the most commonly used french decrease/increase methods.. I’ll also check that I update all this information in my dictionnary of the french knitting terms ! :-P

FRENCH DECREASES

– “surjet“: it’s one of the most commonly used decrease, and is the exact equivalent to the “skpsso” (skip one stitch, knit one stitch, pass slipped stitch over). In french, the instructions of the “surjet” might look like this: glisser 1 m, tric. 1 m. ā  l’endroit, passer la m. glissāŠe par dessus la maille tricotāŠe.

– “surjet double” is a double decrease, worked nearly similarly to the previous one, except that the knit stitch is replaced by a k2tog. It might look like this in french: glisser 1 m, tric 2 m ens ā  l’endr., passer la m glissāŠe par dessus la m obtenue. (slip 1 st, k2tog, pass slipped st over).

– ” 2 m ens ā  l’endr.” is the exact equivalent to the commonly-used k2tog.. although nowhere as concise in french !! :-P The full sentence would read “tricoter 2 mailles ensemble ā  l’endroit”, which quite obviously, translates directly into “knit 2 stitches together”.

FRENCH INCREASES

– “augmentation barrāŠe simple” in one I encoutered recently in a translation of a french knitting pattern. It’s the equivalent of the “kfb” increase: knit in front and back of stitch. You may find all sorts of complicated ways to explain this in french patterns, but it could read something like “tricoter la māĒme maille une fois dans le brin avant, puis sans lacher la maille de l’aiguille, de nouveau dans le brin arriā¨re”.

– “augmentation intercalaire simple” is the french equivalent to the “make one increase”, lifting the little “vertical bar” between 2 stitches. In french, instructions would be to “relever le fil situāŠ entre 2 mailles avec l’aiguille gauche, puis tricoter-le en insāŠrant l’aiguille dans le brin arriā¨re”

1 Comment »

  1. lawheezer:

    This is very good to have. Thanks for taking the time to explain it!

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