Thursday, March 17, 2005

The Next Tricky Bit

At some point in your pattern, you may encounter something like this:
"At the end of this increase row, cast on to the right tip of the needle 6(or whatever number) of stitches."

In other words, you have just finished a right side knitted row...
Turn your work so you are facing the purl side (back) and do a Knitted Cast On, a Cable Cast On, or the simple E-Wrap cast on to add more stitches to your left (full) needle.

You can find a video of the Knitted Cast On here.

Cable Cast On is the same except you go through the space between the last two stitches. Both are illustrated here.

The e wrap is simply a backward loop on the needle
Video here.


Or you could do what I am going to do, which is get a couple pieces of string, crochet two little chains and pick up stitches along the back of the chains the same way I did my initial casting on.

Why? Because I know I will be doing some kind of neck treatment later and I would rather have these stitches live versus picking them up along the edge which leaves a little ridge.


At this point you may be told to join your knitting into a circle.
Here are the instructions for joining.
Yippee, no more purling!

Your pattern will have very specific instructions on how to set up your markers at this point, but once you have it done, you will be sailing - knitting and increasing until you reach a specified number of stitches.

In the next session we will divide our big tube of knitting into three smaller tubes - the body and two sleeves.

Extra credit - When you reach the magic number of stitches, try on your sweater. Slip half of the stitches onto a spare circular needle or length of string. How does it fit? Is the depth of the underarm comfortable?

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Erica, I'm about to start the neck ribbing on my shaped Tee. I took your suggestion about using a provisional cast-on, and since I've never done so before, I'm not sure how to go about picking up those live stitches for the ribbing. Just what am I going to find when I unravel the chain? Any chance of posting some pictures of the process?

ILN

9:11 PM, April 27, 2005  
erica said...

You will take the chain out one stitch at a time. I stick the point of my needle into the each stitch, then (and only then) pulling out the waste yarn - one stitch at a time.

6:12 PM, May 02, 2005  

Post a Comment

<< Home