using size 8 circulars and 3-ply sayelle (acrylic) parisienne DK yarn from mary maxim. cast on 150, joined in the round for a cowl/neck warmer. now, trying to do a pattern of:
- knit 1, yarn over once, knit 2 together once
knit 2, yarn over twice, knit 2 together twice
knit 3, yarn over 3 times, knit 2 together 3 times
repeat from *…
(all in basic knit stitch in-the-round, btw, since i know that’ll come up) so that it has an all over lighter/lacy appearance, and it’s not working. i don’t seem to have enough ‘stretch’ or extra room in my first working round, to get the “knit 2 together” more than 1 set at a time. i used long tail cast on, and doubled the needles. not sure if i should re-cast using 9s or 10s doubled, or what…
any insights?
Maybe the length of your cable/needles is too long for the number of sts in the round?
btw, this is an 18st repeat which will leave some extra sts out of the original 150sts. Are you adding in some other knit sts to fill in?
i double checked that too, and i’m only using a 16" cable (denise set), and the stitches fill the cable and the needles up about 90% without even the slightest stretch, so it should be fine once i’m knitting…
as for the repeat, yeah, it’s an experiment, wasn’t trying for an actual pattern per se… tho if i like the results, i’ll photog and post 
a raveler suggested the german cast-on, as i may need more stretch, and knitting on the tips, but with these denise size 8, there isn’t much difference between the tips and the needle, it flows pretty easily… so we’ll see… i’m still thinking a bigger cast-on size and then switching back to the 8s for working.
Are your cast on stitches twisted? With LTCO I’m not at all sure how that would happen, but maybe. That will make them difficult to work unless you reorient them or knit through the back loop - which would actually be the front loop. I found that working with Denise needles was not my favorite thing and switched to some much pointier. That helps for me. (The Denise needles went to my granddaughter’s friend, I hope she likes them.) Maybe if you worked a round of just knits first and then started your pattern it would work better. It’s not uncommon to have a few rounds for a border before beginning the pattern anyhow. Or you could adjust your stitch count to not need the decreases on the first round and just do the yo’s maybe. Just some thoughts that may or may not be helpful.
nope, no twisted stitches, but just not enough ‘give’ in them. so far from here, ravelry, & menwhoknit.com, the advice and consensus is…
try german cast on for more stretch
try a full row of just knit before the pattern
remember that with multiple yarnovers, i’ll have to knit, purl, knit, (not just knit knit knit)
and also got a lot of helpful people at all 3 posts/sites who pointed out that the pattern doesn’t equal 150 stitches, so if i wanted actual lined up columns i’d need to adjust the count (and then many proceeeded to do the math for me, bless them), but it’s an experiment, so was just going to do it as a random all-over effect.
so many people to thank for chiming in, as usual, so many many thanks to all
thanks to charlotte and her stitch-maps.com help, i was able to ‘visualize’ the cowl project i’ve been thinkering with and posted it in my ravelry projects: http://www.ravelry.com/projects/XtopherCB/kris-krazy-kowl . i’m about 15 rows in, and it does indeed resemble the free-form knitting chart, so many many many thanks
