The row you knit with the working yarn will create live stitches on top of the hole.
You’ll have your stitches that are attached to the rest of the work, the row of waste, and the row of working yarn over that. When you remove the waste yarn, you’ll have live stitches all the way around instead of having to bind off and then pick up stitches. A smoother transition.
The thumbhole. Leave the waste yarn in–kind of like a double sided stitch holder. Check later in the pattern for what you have to do with it and maybe it will make more sense.
The w’s Ingrid drew are the waste yarn. The o’s are the working yarn.
The hand is completed before you do the thumb, so the beauty of this pattern is that you use the waste yarn on the thumb hole area and then finish the hand with the working yarn. You go back afterward, remove the waste yarn as per the directions and knit the thumb using those live stitches that were on the waste yarn.
So take a different color yarn, k7, slip them back to the right needle and knit them with the working yarn as if you didn’t switch colors at all.
ok, i think i’m begining to understand. so i just keep knitting afterwards? won’t the waste yarn get trapped inside? how will i get it out to work the rest of the thumb?