Charts are pretty much absolutely necessary when it comes to double knitting (unless you're making a really basic shape that can be described, like the square in my tutorial). But one thing that confuses some people when they start trying to read charts for double knitting is the fact that a double knitting chart looks like a chart for any other kind of knitting.
Though not designed specifically for double knitting, this simple chart would be a great way to practice. ©: Eileen Casey.That's good in the sense that you can find a knitting chart for a regular two-color knitting project and adapt it for use in double knitting (keeping in mind that double knitting produces a mirror image, so lettering, for example, is not a good idea), but it can be a little awkward thinking about how you're actually going to go about knitting two layers at once from a single-layer image.
The idea is that you're knitting the same thing on both sides, just in different colors. So if you knit one stitch to correspond to the chart, you purl the stitch on the opposite side, still corresponding to that same stitch. So when you switch colors, you switch colors on both sides, now knitting with the color that had been your far-side color and purling with the color that had been your near-side color.
It's not really as confusing as it sounds once you get in there, but the key is to remember that in the case of knitting charts for double knitting, each square represents two stitches instead of one.
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