Hi, I desperately need help! I’m working on a baby afghan (Sleepytime Seashells from the book “Our Best Knit Baby Afghans”), and it’s whooping my butt! I have cast on 135 sts.
Rows 1 - 5 Knit across
This is where I can’t figure out.
Row 6 (Right side): K5, YO, K8, * YO, K1, YO, K8; repeat from * across to last 5 sts, YO, K5: 163 sts.
When I do Row 6, it just doesn’t work out. When I get to the last set of YO, K1, YO, K8, there are more than 5 sts left to knit. And if I do a YO, K5, then there aren’t 5 sts to knit at the end, but 4. Am I doing something wrong? This is driving me nuts and I have no idea what to do.
I hope someone can explain it to me so that I can get it to work.
knitaddict06
It [I]should[/I] work out. There are 18 stitches outside of the … section, 13 before and 5 after (not including the yarn overs). Then, within the … there are 9 stitches. If you subtract the 18 stitches from the original 135, you wind up with 117 which does divide evenly by 9. All that to say, you know there isn’t an error in the pattern.
I would venture to guess that you’re either forgetting a yarn over somewhere or you aren’t quite doing the yarn overs properly. A yarn over is simply [U]bringing the yarn to the front between the needles, and returning it to the back over the right needle[/U]. It does not include a knit stitch afterwards, which is a common mistake.
I have to agree with knitqueen. I, too, worked out the stitches but I included the YOs and Row 2 worked out to 163. This is how I broke it down:
Begin K5, YO, k8 (14 sts)
Repeat (13 times) between *s YO, k1, YO, k8 (11 sts x 13 repeats = 143 sts),
End YO, k5 (6 sts)
Total sts: 163 (14 + 143 + 6)
Could you be doing the end of the row wrong? I know I did when I first tried to work out your stitch count! After the last repeat of YO, k1, YO, k8 I kept wanting to do YO, k1, YO, K5 instead of simply YO, K5. And that mistake caused the stitches to come up short – there weren’t enough for the k5! It took me a couple of very focused re-reads of the pattern before I figured out what I was doing wrong!
Anyway, if it were me, I would put the project down for an hour or so and go do something else. When you come back to it, you’ll have fresh eyes and I’ll bet when you count out your Row 2 sts again, you’ll figure it out!
OMG! I am so dumb sometimes when it comes to YOs LOL Thank you so much for explaining this to me. I will try it again and see if I can get it worked out. I’ll let ya know if I figure it out! Thanks again
Thank you so much everyone, especially knitqueen! I had been trying to do this afghan for weeks, and could not figure out what I was doing wrong! You have no idea how grateful I am to everyone who took the time to respond to my post. I was doing exactly what knitqueen thought I was doing, which was knitting a stitch after the YO. I think I always knew I wasn’t doing it right, just didn’t know why I wasn’t doing the YO right.
Now that I have discovered how to do it, I have already gotten about 1/4 of the way done with this blanket. I’ll post a pic of it when I am finished.
I am working on 3 different baby blankets at the same time…got a niece and a nephew that’s due in July and August, and I have my first grand(daughter?) due at the end of August, or beginning of Sept, so I’m gonna be quite busy this summer.
Again, thank you to all who responded
knitaddict06