I am re-picking up my needles after a long break and wanted to do a baby blanket…
I saw this blanket http://www.bernat.com/pattern.php?PID=1024 and don’t understand this line…
Cast on 159 sts.
Knit 3 rows, noting 1st row is WS and inc 10 sts evenly across last row. 169 sts.
159 is not a number than can be evenly divided… is there a trick in calculating this?
Evenly spaced doesn’t always means exactly the same number of sts apart. It’ll be fine if you k7, inc k15, inc, k15, inc, k15, inc etc and end with k8 or something. Here’s a calculator for increasing sts which gave me a little different pattern.
Thank you kindly… the link is especially helpful !
I have seen lots of patterns like this. They want you to cast on a certain # of stitches, K a border of 5 rows (or whatever) and then increase sts across on the last row before starting the actual pattern for the “body” of the blanket.
WHY is this? Why don’t they tell you to just cast on the amount of sts for the body at the very beginning and eliminate the “increase” part altogether???
Anybody got a clue?
knitcindy
The border is garter st and it’s stretchy widthwise, so when you move on to the body of the blanket, adding more sts will keep the ends from flaring out. You probably dec 10 sts at the other end before the edging too.
If you don’t increase, it causes the edge to look like the bottom of a bell. Well, depending on what pattern you are starting. Most patterns are tighter than a garter stitch border and will pull in and cause the garter stitch edging to look out of place. There’s probably gonna be a corresponding decrease on the other side so that it evens out in the same way.
Edit: And of course if I had read one post farther, I’d have realized that suzeeq already answered this.
That’s okay, doesn’t hurt to throw out the same reasoning more than once.