Alternative provisional cast on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3J-sUx_whE

Grafting Garter Stitch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAEIogIli6o

Ordered plenty of this DK wool as it was on sale and I am making the ruffle each side 12 stitches wide instead of the 10 stated. The red is a bit brighter than I would have liked - too pillar box/Heinz tomato soup tin red - something a tad darker and more subtle would have been better, but it let’s me try the pattern out before I buy something gorgeous to knit it again. Leftovers will be good for Christmas projects. Have done a number of practice runs of the first 10 rows or so on waste yarn to throw up any problems.

06 June 2015:

Finally can start this.

Knit one row straight into the provisional CO before commencing WS set up row.

YO at turn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drv2kFcPm2U

Slipping first stitch purlwise of each row, wyif to make neat chain edge rather than unsightly bumps.

Row 11, had to rip all out & start again, inexplicably on WS rows had omitted purl stitch after last marker before knitting to end!

Wow! Clever pattern, my number dyslexic brain could never come up with this sort of design, I have enough trouble with knitting just working out WS chart rows showing knits with purl bump symbols, I have to visually in my brain turn all that the other way round to see it, heaven help me designing something like this.

In the swing of the pattern, just hope this wool and needle size combo is going to be drapey enough. The chart is a real help until you are up and running.

I wrote out rows 15 - 20, stuck them on a page each in very small book. Book has elastic to hold you at a certain page, so I clamp the page down for the row I am on so don’t lose the page, if knitting outside or packing up my knitting bag in a hurry. I also have 2 small stitch markers clipped onto the elastic and slide one along each time I do a turn on a short row. I know you can count if you 3 spare stitches on the RS rows or 4 on the WS rows to see if you have done enough short rows, but this little sliding the marker trick ensures I don’t get muddled up.

When I put in a lifeline every so often, it is always on a RS row 19, that way I don’t need to keep jotting down what row a LL goes in, I always know it is row 19 should I need to rip back.

11 May 2019

Picked this up again today, cannot find my notes and took an age to recall how I was knitting this and where exactly in the pattern row where I was. I think I’ve got into the swing of it again now. Approaching the halfway mark.

28 May 2019

Really enjoying this now. Decreasing and therefore going quickly. I have bought purple wool/alpaca mix to make a second of these in large. I feared I would run out of red wool for this and so stopped increasing when I got to 160 stitches.

12 June 2019

Finished yesterday. Now washed and drying blocked out, did not pin as did not want aggressive blocking. Onto my second one already, it is in purple alpaca/wool mix DK weight.