Slipping stitches and cast on advice

How-to Questions
1

Right, im doing samples for “10 stitch blanket” i found on rav. it goes in a spiral with short row shaping to turn the corners and uses pick up stiches to joinas you go. i reckon ive got it all figure out, kind of.

the pattern slips the first stitch, this is what you later pickup from. at one point i forgot to do this but i couldnt see the difference so i stopped slipping the stitches ( i was doing it knitwise). then i found out how to get a selvedge/chain along the edge. this seemed to make the picking up part way easier.

i tried to ask what difference it would make and i keep getting left more confused. some people say to do the selvedge, other say not to slip at all.

ive only been knitting a wee while and this will be my first project. can anyone explain why sople people slip the first stitch etc its just my head is starting to hurt.

also as later on i pickup from my cast on edge, which cast on would you recomend. ive only realy tried long tail so far and i always end up with it realy tight. if i do it over two needles the first row ends up looking realy loose and horrible.

thanks

Julie

2

Sometimes slipping the st makes it more difficult to pick up sts because the slipped st spans 2 rows and if you have to pick up 3 sts out of every 4 rows then you need to pick up the 3 in every row and skip the 4th. But this is garter st I think, so you pick up every other row anyway and there it doesn’t matter. So for this pattern you can slip them if you prefer it - there is no ‘best’, it’s whatever works for you. A knit cast on would probably be loose enough and easy to pick up fro,.

The one thing I found with slipping sts in entrelac is that sometimes there’s a gap in the st next to the one that’s picked up, which I didn’t like. Not slipping looked better there.

Good for you for practicing on a sample first, it’s good to learn the pattern and techniques before you start the actual project.