Newbie, quick question!

How-to Questions
1

Hello!

I’m a newbie about to start her second pair of socks. I just have a question about casting on. It asks to cast onto 3 DPNs, 4mm, and then change down to 3.25mm. I thought at first it’d make more sense to CO with a straight 4mm needle and just transfer them to 3.25 needles, but as it’s 52 sts and 3 DPNs, it isn’t the same number of sts on each DPN. The pattern says to put 18sts on N1, and 17sts each on N2 and N3. I’m just wondering, do I need to transfer them on in reverse i.e. do the two 17sts needles first and then the 18sts needle, needle 1, so that N1 is in the right position? In other words, if I just transfer them in order of N1 to N3, would I end up with 18 sts on the wrong needle?

I know I could just start over and CO with 4mm DPNs, but I want to learn things! I do prefer casting on with a straight needle first anyway, but last time I had an equal number of sts on each DPN so it didn’t matter which way round I transfered the sts from the straight needle.

TIA! :slight_smile:

2

Welcome to the forum!
It doesn’t really matter in which order you move the sts to the dpns. Once you’ve moved them you can always adjust the numbers on the needles. N1 will be the needle that you start working sts from and it will be next to the working yarn.

3

Thanks! I guess my lack of confidence is why I was worried about moving the stitches around again once on the DPNs. I hope these socks match when I finish them, the first pair I made are lopsided… One’s bigger than the other!

4

I like your idea of casting onto a single needle and then shifting to dpns. That definitely easier than casting onto the dpns first.
Do you know why one of the last pair was bigger than the other? stitch count, gauge or something else?