I have finally cracked this (I think!!). After trying unsuccesfully to knit Barbara Walker’s Staircase pattern (p65 in A Treasury of Knitting Patterns) in the round following her deceptively simple instruction to “miss out the first and last stitch” – I gave up. Three attempts was too much.
I turned to the net of course and found various sites which offered help but this is the one which really made the penny drop for me.
I confess to feeling really dumb about it until I read this from Interweave’s “Knitting Daily” Blog. for some reason my brain just could not fathom it out! I suppose I must run on too many straight lines or some other such Freudian mumbo-jumbo! Anyway, having read these very clear instructions I got the message and decided to have a go with writing it out on a grid. I’d knitted it ok on two needles so knew how it worked and could immediately see when it was done as a series of squares on graph paper, what I needed to do. Reversing all the wrong side rows so the instructions read back to front and of course, continuing to knit rather than purl to make stocking stitch.
I feel far more confident now about tackling some of the other patterns in the BW Treasury on circular or dp needles.
I’m making this hot water bottle cover in the Staircase pattern in my DK cashmere. The way the weather feels at the moment I shall be needing it sooner rather than later!!
