Beginner Help with Increases - stitches not adding up

Hi,

I’m fairly new to knitting and am struggling mightily with reading a pattern. It’s the We Are Knitters Juliet Tee.

I have to do an increase row, with these instructions:

“knit 5 stitches, make 1 increase. * knit 4 stitches. make 1 increase *. Repeat from * to * until 6 stitches remain, knit 6 stitches. At the end of the row you will have a total of 82 stitches.”

I start the row with 67 stitches and should end with 82, but not matter how many times I try, I end up with 86. I have tried the M1 and the kfb increases (with the latter, like this: k4, kfb, * k3, kfb * but to be honest I have no idea if that’s the right way to do it. Clearly not since it isn’t working. I’ve frogged this section so many times my yarn is starting to split and I’m getting frustrated!

I’m sure it’s a simple solution but I cannot for the life of me figure it out. What am I doing wrong?

Should I be knitting 5 stitches clean, and then making a (6th st) increase, and then consider that as the first stitch of the repeat?

Please help! Thank you :slight_smile:

Welcome to the forum!
You’re thinking correctly about the Make 1 or kfb. Before the row you have 5sts, a repeat of 4sts x 14 and then 6sts. There are 15 increases so that takes the stitch count from 67 to 82sts.
It may help to place a marker after the first 5sts and then every 4sts to the last 6sts. You can use stitch markers or small loops of contrasting scrap yarn. You would adjust this number as you’ve noted if you use a kfb instead of Make 1.

Wow, thank you so much for your help - that worked! Funny how visualising it like that makes it seem so obvious…I think I got all turned around by the pattern and started to see it as more complicated than it was. I did what you suggested and used stitch markers and went with M1 increases between each ‘set’. I slipped the increases rather than knitting them and it seemed to work.

Thanks again for your help and the welcome!

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