A GLOSSARY OF KNIT-RELATED TERMS

• Afghan: A knitted or crochet rug or blanket.
  
  
• Bartack: A zig-zag sewing stitch used to form a bar to strengthen pocket and/or placket edges.
• Batchelor tea cosy: A tea cosy with openings for the handle and spout, so that it need not be removed for pouring.
• Bat-wing sleeve: A loose fitting sleeve that is cut in one with the garment body.
• Bind-off: To complete and lock a stitch or group of stitches.   Known as cast-off in the UK.
• Boot stockings: Socks or stockings worn over fine stockings to protect them from friction and wear inside the boot.
  
  
• Cable: The twisting of knitted stitches to form ornamental texered patterns.
• CAD: An acronym for computer-aided design.
• CAM: An acronym for computer-aided manufacture.
• Cardigan: A knitted form of a sleeved waistcoat.   Named after the Earl of Cardigan (1797-1868).
• Casting-off: A method of sealing the last course of a piece of knitting.
• Circular knitting machine: A machine with a circular needle bed.
  A Plain circular machine has one set of needles lying vertically, known as a cylinder.
  A circular rib machine in addition to the cylinder, has a second set of needles held horizontally called a dial.
• Circular needle: A double-ended needle with a flexible centre, first used in 1924.
• Clock: An ornament on the side (usually over the ankle) of a stocking.
• Course: A row of knitted loops running horizontally across the fabric, (same as a row in handknitting).
• Course length: The length of yarn used to knit one course.
  
  
• Double-knitting: Tubular knitting worked on two needles by slipping alternate stitches.
  
  
• Float: The carrying of yarn across the front or back of the fabric without weaving or knitting it in.
• Fully cut: A knitted garment where all edges are cut from a length of knitted fabric.
• Fully fashioned: Where the shaping of the garment is done on the machine or knitting needles, so that all sevedges are finished.
  
  
• Garment blank: A piece of knitting that is knitted to the garment width and length, the only cutting being the neck shape, and sometimes the shaping at the sleeve head.
• Grafting: Darning two knitted pieces together (usually through the open loops) so that the join is invisible.
  
  
• Hand flat: An industrial V-bed or flat bed, hand-powered knitting machine.
  It is used for sampling or quick response, short-production runs.
  
  
• Intarsia: A method of colour patterning, where a separate strand of yarn is used for each colour.
  Each area of colour is single and does not have another coloured yarn passing either through it or across it.
  There is a specialist industrial machine for knitting intarsia.
  
  
• Jacquard: The industrial term for Fair-Isle multi-coloured knitting.
• Jersey fabric: Plain stocking stitch (stockinet) fabric.
  
  
• Loop density: The number of loops (or stitches) within a specified area of fabric, expressed as loops per square cm, or loops per square inch.
  
  
• Mosaic knitting: A two colour garter stitch fabric, where each row is worked in a single colour, slipping stitches of the previous row that have been knitted in the other colour.
• Moss stitch: A fabric in which single plain and purl sts alternate both vertically and horizontally.
  
  
• Plain weft fabric: The simplest weft knitting, where both course and wale loops are the same,
  but one side of the fabric has knit loops and one side has purl.
• Plated fabric: a fabric in which there are two yarns in each loop.
  The yarns are arranged so that one yarn shows on the face of the fabric, while the other yarns shows on the reverse.
  Subtle colour or texture Patterns can be achieved by reversing the front/back role of the two yarns.
• Pressing off: The act of removing the knitting from the needles of a knitting machine, whether by accident or design.
• Purl fabric: A fabric that contains both reverse and face loops in any one wale, for example: moss stitch.
  
  
• Quick response: Allowing the absolutly shortest time between ordering and delivery.
  
  
• Relaxed fabric: When the stress forces within the loop structure are in equilibrium, the dimensional state of the fabric is said to be relaxed.
• Rib fabric: A fabric in which all the loops in any one wale are either face or reverse loops.
• A Round: One course in circular or tubular knitting.
  
  
• Sloppy-joe: A loosely fitting sleeved jumper, very fashionable in the 1940's.
• Spirality: A distortion of knitted fabric. The courses do not align at right angles, but slope to one side. This is caused by residual torque in high twisted, Z spun yarns.
• Stockinet: Stocking stitch fabric, with plain sts on one side, and purl sts on the other.
• Stolling: Horizontal knitted trim, such as a neck-band,or a side-ways knitted button-band. Stolling is always constructed by knitting very few rows over lots of stitches.
• strapping: A vertical knitted trim, like a separately knitted button-band, where lots of rows are knitted on few sts.
• Swiss darning: A form of embroidery on knitted fabric, made by duplicating the knitted structure.
  
  
• Take-down mechanism: A weighted or roller device on a knitting machine that holds the knitted fabric at a constant tension.
• Tension: A word used to describe Gauge, which is expressed as the measurement in cms or inches of a specified number of stitches and/or rows.
• Tex: A measurement of the linear density (thickness) of yarn, defined as the weight in grams of 1000 metres of yarn.
• Toile: A trial garment that tests the shape, sizing and finishes at the design stage.
  
  
• Unroving: The pulling out of a row or rows of knitting.
  All weft knitting will unrove from the end last knitted.
  
  
• Wale: A wale is a vertical line of stitches running from the begining to the end of a piece of weft knitted fabric.
  In machine knitting this is the product of one needle.
• Weft fabric: A fabric created from a continuous thread travelling from side to side.
• Welt: A knitted strip, border or hem, usually knitted more tightly than the main garment.
  
  
• Yarn: Spun thread made from either synthetic or natural fibres.