I’m making some pillows for my mom to go with a quilt she’s making. i don’t even know where to start my problem! this is my second project, and the first was a mitered bag, so that was easy.
my first problem is that it a have to K2, k2tog, yo, k3, work in pat to last 7 sts, k2, k2tog, yo, k3. thats all for one row! so i have everything down 'cept the “yo”. i know it means yarn over, but i’ve never quite understood what it is that i’m supposed to do on that part.
then, after it tells me what the pattern i’m doing is, it says (multiple of 8+4 sts). what in the world does that mean?
can anyone help the rookie? i need some guidance, and any help would be appreciated. thanks!
If you look at the Increases page of the videos here at KnittingHelp, at the very bottom on the right hand side you’ll find a video explaining how to do a yarn-over – basically, you’re looping your working yarn over your right needle and that becomes a stitch.
In this case, you’re making a k2tog, a yo, and then k3. So you’ll k2tog, then wrap the needle (bringing the working yarn from the back, under the right needle, over the right needle to the back again), insert the tip of the right needle into the next stitch for the first of the k3 stitches, then wrap the right needle as normal and knit the first of the k3 stitches. You will end up with the yo loop between your K3 stitches and the k2tog stitch. Does that make sense? (The video will be more clear than this. 
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You won’t need it in this pattern, but in the future remember that you want to end up with that yo stitch on the right hand needle, so if it’s followed by a purl stitch, you have to wrap the needle all the way around one and a half times. That took me a few tries to figure out the first time I tried that!
The 8+4 means that your lace pattern is made up of 8 stitches, repeated however many times you need, plus there’s 4 stitches that are outside the pattern of the lace (usually to provide selvedge stitches on the end of each row). This number is provided, among other things, so you can make your knitting wider or narrower if needed to fit the pattern differently - if you need to make it bigger by one repeat, you add 8 stitches to your cast-on, if it should be narrower by one repeat, you subtract 8 stitches from the cast-on.
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