Knitting is Forgiving

Now that you know how to cast on, knit, purl, and bind, you can make anything you want. A short-sleeved sweater? Easy. Let’s just take your measurements. Make a sample to know how many stitches equal an inch. Let’s do the calculations. Okay, cast on 120. The loops, honey, count the loops. Not too tight or too loose, like your holding a baby chick.

Knit four, purl four, at the end of the row, turn it over, and follow the pattern. Your starting side is your right side. You need to keep track. How are you going to keep track? If you don’t keep track, you’ll lose the pattern.

Wow, you’ve done a lot! What’s wrong? Mmmm. What happened here? Let’s see. No, honey, don’t worry, you don’t have to start over, you don’t have to undo the whole thing. Let’s see. Here, you dropped a stitch, and here it looks like you added an extra knot. At least you knew to stop. We can fix this.

Put this needle through the hole, move it back to the left. Now for this other one. Look at the knot, see the direction it’s going in, and just pick it up like this. There. It’s gone. You’re on row 43, okay, that means you’re on the right side. Keep going.