I’ve picked up the needles after over a year away from them. I decided I would make a relatively simple afghan. Here’s the thing though, I’m baffled at the beginning of the pattern. Please don’t laugh at me because this is a really silly question.
It says to knit rows 1-8. Okay. But if I knit one row and turn it over, don’t I have to purl the other side? I know this is a silly question. Please help. I bought a ton of yarn and I don’t want to mess it up.
Question about pattern - beginner question
It depends on the look of the pattern. Does the pattern say to knit 8 rows of stockinette or does it just say to knit 8 rows? You don’t HAVE TO purl the wrong side of every garment you do. If you did that you’d end up with nothing but stockinette stitch and that would get kind of boring after a while.
From the way you have the pattern listed above, it looks like you are just knitting those first 8 rows. It sounds like the pattern begins with a garter stitch border. Garter stitch is the result you get from knitting every row for two or more rows. It looks like a series of horizontal bumps going across your rows and it looks like that on both sides.
Stockinette stitch is what you get when you alternate a knit row with a purl row. At least when you are doing it flat. One side of it will look like a series of V’s next to one another going across and the other side will look like a horizontal series of bumps.
Thanks! It doesn’t say to knit in stockinette. Gosh - amazing what you can forget after you put the needles down for a bit of time.
It’s normal to have a garter stitch border at the edges, and knitting every row gives you that.
I guess I should ask this other question.
This is what I am making.
http://www.dailyknitter.com/iris.html
It looks really small in the photo so I think I’m actually going to double up the pattern to make it twice as large. I shouldn’t have any hassle in doing that if I increase the number of stitches to 176 from 88, right?
I figured this was a good, easy project to get back into the knitting groove. I’m not quite prepared for anything more than knits and purls at this point.
Yup. Thats a garter stitch edge. You are just going to knit the first 8 rows.
Rats, my previous answer got eaten…
No you don’t just double the sts, there’s 4 sts on each side in garter stitch that you don’t repeat across the row. Take off 8 from the 88 which gives you 80 then double that for 160 sts, and add the 8 sts back on. So you actually cast on 168 sts.
Oh wow! Thank you so much! I didn’t do the math. Twenty stitches make up the pattern!
You guys are the best!
Right, and if 168 turns out too big you can do 128 or 148.