As any experienced knitter or crocheter may know, working out the maths behind evenly spaced increases or decreases can be a challenging task. Not every crafter is numerically gifted, and such complex maths puzzles can leave us completely perplexed. I myself have struggled to work out how to increase evenly in knitting and crochet projects - there are just too many numbers to keep track of! It's for exactly that reason that I decided to sit down and work out the maths to make my very own knitting increase calculator. Naturally, it would be selfish to keep such a useful tool all to myself, so I thought I would share it with the rest of the knitting community. I do hope that you find the knitting calculator useful - it's certainly been a lifesaver for some of my own knitting projects!
About the calculator
The knitting decrease calculator (which can also be used as a knitting increase calculator or a crochet increase calculator) is made up of four spreadsheet pages. The first page of the spreadsheet is used to determine which calculator you need to use. There are then three calculator pages, which can be used for the following:
- Calculator 1: Used for decreases where you have more rows than stitches to decrease. You will decrease 1 stitch at each end of every decrease row.
- Calculator 2: Used for decreases where you have more stitches to decrease than rows. You will decrease several stitches every row.
- Calculator 3: Used for decreases where you have multiple stitches to decrease in only 1 row. You will distribute these decreases evenly across this row.
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The knitting calculator decrease calculations, used to get evenly spaced decreases across 2 |
How to use the calculator
You can access the knitting and crochet decrease calculator for free by clicking on the link below. The link will take you through to a Google Sheets file, which you can then download a copy of and edit for your own personal use. This can be done by clicking 'file', then 'download'. Before starting to use the calculators, I would recommend reading the Calculator Guide page. This is to make sure that you are using the right calculator for your knitting or crochet needs.
The knitting calculator is my own creation and is therefore copyrighted to me. I am sharing it for personal use only - the calculator can be downloaded, used and adapted for your own use, but should not be shared with others. If you do want to share this tool, please support my blog by crediting my work. It took a lot of hard work to create it, after all.
A note for designers
I've currently been using the calculator to work out increases and decreases for my own knitwear designs. Should any designers be interested, I would be happy to share another version of the calculator that can calculate the increases/decreases of multiple sizes.
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