Glossary

Every term the converter uses, in plain English — the equipment first, then how each hand-knitting instruction is actually worked on a knitting machine.

Machine and equipment terms

What the parts are and when your pattern will ask for them.

Bed / needle bed: The long metal bar holding the needles. A standard domestic machine has one bed (the main bed) with 200 needles, usually numbered outward from a centre 0.
Ribber (double bed): A second needle bed that bolts to the front of the machine and holds needles facing the main bed. It makes purl stitches possible without turning the fabric, so ribbing, brioche, tuck rib, circular knitting and double-bed jacquard all need it.
Knit carriage: The carriage you push across the bed to knit a row. Its buttons set the stitch type: plain knit, tuck, slip (part), or weaving.
Ribber carriage: The carriage that rides on the ribber and is linked to the knit carriage so both beds knit in one pass. It has its own tuck/slip settings.
Garter carriage: A small motorised carriage (Brother G-carriage) that crawls across the bed on its own and can hand off stitches to produce purl bumps on the knit side. It makes garter stitch, seed stitch and purl texture automatic — but it is slow, roughly one row per several seconds.
Lace carriage: A carriage that moves stitches sideways onto neighbouring needles to make eyelets. On Brother machines it is not fully automatic: you alternate lace-carriage transfer passes with knit-carriage passes yourself, usually two transfer passes per lace row.
Intarsia carriage: A carriage that lifts every needle to hold position so you can lay separate colours of yarn across the needles by hand. Used for blocks of colour with no floats behind them.
Colour changer: A box at the left of the bed holding up to four yarns, letting you swap colour with a lever instead of rethreading. Essential for anything with frequent stripes or two-colour tuck.
Transfer tool: A small hand tool with one to seven prongs (an eyelet tool) used to lift stitches off needles and put them somewhere else — for decreases, increases, cables, eyelets and moving stitches to the ribber.
Full-fashioned decrease: A shaping decrease worked with a multi-prong transfer tool: several edge stitches move inward together so the decrease line sits two or three stitches in from the edge. The machine equivalent of a hand-knit paired decrease.
Claw weights and cast-on comb: Hanging weights and a toothed bar that pull the fabric down so stitches knit off cleanly. Not optional — most dropped stitches are a weighting problem.
Punchcard machine: A mechanical patterning machine that reads a card punched with holes. The repeat is fixed at 24 stitches wide, and card length must be a multiple of 8 rows.
Electronic machine: A machine that reads a pattern from a built-in memory, mylar sheet, or a computer link (img2track, AYAB, DesignaKnit). Repeats can be any width up to the full 200 needles.
Tension / stitch dial: The dial that sets stitch size, numbered roughly 0-10. It is not yarn weight — always knit a swatch and measure, because gauge on a machine is set entirely by this dial.
Tuck and slip (part): Two patterning settings. Tuck holds a loop on the needle instead of knitting it, making a raised, wider fabric. Slip passes the needle by, making a narrower, denser fabric with floats behind.
Waste yarn and ravel cord: Scrap yarn knitted before and after the real piece so the edge stays on the machine, plus a smooth cord that pulls out to release live stitches for later grafting or seaming.
Hold position (E position): Needles pushed out so the carriage passes them without knitting. This is how short rows, sock heels, shoulder slopes and bust darts are worked.
Latch tool: A single hooked tool with a latch, used to ladder stitches back up, to bind off, and to hand-form purl stitches or mock cables.

Hand knitting to machine knitting

Look up a hand-knit abbreviation to see the machine step it becomes.

k (knit): One plain pass of the carriage. On the machine the knit side faces away from you, so the fabric you see while knitting is the purl side.
p (purl): With a ribber: put that needle on the ribber bed. Without a ribber: reform the stitch by hand with a latch tool, or use the garter carriage.
k2tog: Transfer one stitch onto its neighbour to the left with a 1-prong tool, leaving the emptied needle out of work (or push it back if the count shrinks).
ssk / skpo: The same single transfer, but move the stitch onto its neighbour to the right so the decrease leans the other way.
k3tog / cdd (central double decrease): Stack three stitches on one needle with a 2- or 3-prong tool, then knit the row. Two needles are emptied.
m1r / m1l (make one): Pick up the horizontal bar between two stitches from the row below with a transfer tool and hang it on an empty needle brought into work. Picking up the near side of the bar leans it one way, the far side the other — that is the only difference between m1r and m1l on the machine.
kfb (knit front and back): Bring the next empty needle into work and hang the purl bump from the neighbouring stitch of the row below onto it, then knit the row.
yo (yarn over): An eyelet: transfer a stitch onto its neighbour and leave the emptied needle in work. It picks up a new loop on the next pass, making the hole.
Increase at the edge (inc 1 each end): Bring one needle into work at each end and let it pick up a loop, or use a multi-prong tool to move the whole edge group outward for a tidy full-fashioned increase.
w&t (wrap and turn) / short rows: Put the needles beyond the turn into hold position, wrap the yarn under the first held needle before the return pass, and knit back. Nothing is turned — the carriage simply skips the held needles.
Cable (C4F, C6B): Lift each half of the crossing group onto separate transfer tools, swap their positions, rehang, then knit the row. Loosen tension a full number for cable rows and hang extra weight.
1x1 / 2x2 rib: Set up the ribber with the matching needle arrangement and knit both beds together. Without a ribber, knit mock rib by putting some needles out of work and latching up the ladders afterwards.
Garter stitch: Alternating knit and purl rows. Use the garter carriage, or knit stockinette and hand-reform every other row, or work double-bed and transfer stitches bed to bed each row.
Seed / moss stitch: Garter carriage, or a hand-reformed purl on alternate stitches. On a plain single-bed machine this is slow; a tuck or slip texture is often substituted.
Brioche / fisherman's rib: Double-bed tuck rib: both carriages set to tuck, two carriage passes per pattern row, and looser tension than plain rib. Two-colour brioche alternates yarns each pass with a colour changer.
Fair Isle / stranded colourwork: Two-colour patterning read from a punchcard or electronic chart, with floats on the back. Floats longer than about 5 stitches need a weaving setting or backing.
Intarsia: Colour blocks with no floats. Needles go to hold position and every colour is laid across by hand, either with an intarsia carriage or with the knit carriage on a hold setting.
Bobbles and nupps: No machine setting exists. Work them by hand with a latch tool on a held needle, or substitute a tuck cluster if the texture matters more than the exact bump.
Lace (yo + decrease patterns): Lace carriage transfer passes alternated with knit passes, or all-manual transfers with an eyelet tool. Every lace row means extra passes, so allow more time than the hand version suggests.
Bind off / cast off: Latch-tool chain bind off across the needles, or knit into waste yarn and bind off by hand later. For a stretchy edge, loosen a couple of numbers on the last row first.
Pick up stitches: Hang the edge of the finished piece onto the needles bump by bump, usually with a 1- or 2-prong tool, then knit the band from those needles.
Work even / work straight: Simply knit rows with no shaping. Machine row counters make this the easiest part — set the counter and knit to the number.
Gauge / tension swatch: Knit at least 40 stitches x 60 rows, take it off, let it rest, then measure over 10 cm. Machine fabric relaxes a lot, so measuring on the machine gives the wrong number.

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