Debbie Bliss Sunday Best Cardigan Question?

#1

I am stuck at the beginning of this pattern. It says, cast on 97 st
1st row: K2,* cast off 3 sts (i will remain on needle), K2 then repeat from star until 5 sts left…

I keep ending up with wrong number of stitches at end??? Casting off 3, does that mean to knit one, then cast off, knit one and then cast off three times? Do I use on of the 2 knit sts I did previously to cast off and count that as 3? Or do I knit 2, then knit 1, knit 1 and cast off using those newly knit sts?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanx,
Brette

#2

Good question. :?? Usually when it says cast off so many you begin there to knit 2 and do the first lift over with the first of those 2, and then you would knit another and lift, and knit another and lift to BO3. But if you do that here you don’t end up with 1 stitch on the needle. To end up with 1 you have to knit 2 and lift the first of those over, knit 1, lift, knit 1, lift. Then you will have 1 on the needle. Then you would knit two and immediately begin the lifting, to keep working like that. But is that what they want? I don’t know. That makes bind offs right at the beginning of the row. Does that seem right? and it makes only 1 stitch between BOs all the way across, does that seem right? It says to do that till 5 remain, but it doesn’t seem to end up with 5 at the end after a k2. (that is figuring this as a multiple of 5+2, which maybe isn’t correct). What does it say to do with the last 5 stitches?

I couldn’t find this pattern on Ravelry among Debbie Bliss’s things. So I can’t even look at a picture to see what might be happening. Can you tell why they have these bind offs on this row?

#3

In order to cast off you need to work 2 sts. So if you k2, then you need to knit another 2 for the first cast off stitch. Then k1, pass a stitch over, k1, pass a stitch over. That’s 3 cast off and one st remains on the R needle. K2 (this gives you 3 sts on the R needle), k2 more and pass one st over. Then k1, pass one, k1 pass one. Keep going like this, you have 2 sts at the beginning of the row and a space, then the rest of the row you’d have 3 sts and a space across to the end until you have 5 sts left.

#4

Sue is right.

In order to cast off you need to work 2 sts. So if you k2, then you need to knit another 2 for the first cast off stitch. Then k1, pass a stitch over, k1, pass a stitch over. That’s 3 cast off and one st remains on the R needle.

If you do what Sue says here you will not have 1 on the needle but 3. That is what confused me. Since you are so close to the beginning I thought maybe when they said you would have 3 they meant it literally, but I think they mean you will have the 2, the cast off 3 space, and [U]1 at the tip of the needle[/U], so 3 really, but 1 that they are talking about. :lol:

And if you do it the way Sue says you do end up with 2 at the beginning, 3 cast off and then 3 stitches-- the 3 off, 3 on all across. To check that this is the final solution I cast on 97 sts and worked it as Sue says and it is perfect. You end up with 5 and I’ll bet they then say,“CO 3, k1”. That will make it end up with 2 at the end just like the beginning.

Sue knew all this without casting on 97. :lol: I knew this [I]should[/I] be the way it worked but since you were having trouble I thought maybe something else was going on. And these “simple” little problems are so hard for me to visualize and understand exactly how many stitches are being affected by the different steps that the only way to be sure on this one was to cast on and knit it. One more mystery solved. :thumbsup:

#5

I wasn’t sure how it would come out at the end, but if you end up with 5 sts, I figured that you’d cast off 3 again and have a matching 2 sts at that end of the row.

Yeah, I (and the pattern) meant that there’s one st on the R needle from casting off, which is the first st of the 3 that should be between each space.