Help with reading a pattern?

#1

Hello,

Where I’m from it’s getting quite late, and after my mum bullying me into finally knitting something other than a scarf, I decided to make a small baby sweater. The problem is, I have a question and she’s already asleep, so i thought to seek the help of people online.

I’m currently knitting my first sleeve and I have a bit of trouble knowing where to start adding stitches. Here’s part of the pattern (translated to english, seeing as it’s in dutch):

[I]Sleeves:
Cast on 38 stitches. Do two rows of rib stitch (1k 1p). After this, knit further in St. st. and add stitches on both sides:

  • every 8th row add 1 (on both sides), repeat 4 times.[/I]

Now my question is: I’ve done the rib stitch, but I’m not sure how to continue. Should I knit 8 rows before adding the stitches or add the stitches now and then knit 8 rows and add again?

I myself am thinking the first one (because the whole sleeve seems to be consisted of the 32 rows it’d add up to and 24 rows seems a bit short for a sleeve), but I’m starting to doubt myself, so if anyone can help me, I’d be really grateful! :slight_smile:

Oh, as an extra piece of info: this is a sweater for a 3 month old baby, not sure if that’s relevant though :wink:

Thanks a lot!

Emma

#2

Your mother[I] forced[/I] you to knit a baby sweater?!? How cruel!!!:teehee:

You can count the first row of stockinette as row 1 and then increase on rows 9, 17, 25, and 33.

OR, you could include the first 2 rows in your count and increase from there. It won’t make a whole lot of difference either way.

#3

Yeah, she basically said it was time for me to stop knitting scarfs and stop being afraid of having to add a certain shaping into a project :smiley: And so far, I’ve finsihed the back and front side within 48 hours and am now starting on the first sleeve, and I must say I’m having fun, seeing as it’t not as boring as knitting scarfs all day.

Thanks a lot for the answer! when I re-read the dutch pattern, I think it means that i should start counting rows after the first two rows of rib, so I’ll do the 9, 17, 25… one

Thanks again! now I’ll have something to do again while watching Battlestar Galactica :stuck_out_tongue:

#4

I’m glad your enjoying it. Like Ingrid says, you could do it either way and it would still turn out basically the same. The one thing I advise is to take lots of notes so you can keep track and make sure you do it the same way for both sleeves. I have notebooks full of notes that I keep when I’m knitting patterns. I don’t know what I’d do without them!

Please post a picture of your sweater when you’re done. I’d love to see it. :slight_smile: