Last night I made it to the 37cms required to start the raglan shaping, actually I knit 40cms to make it the same length as my favourite sweater. But instead of starting the decreases I spent over an hour desperately trying to make sense of how to cast off three stitches at either end and still maintain a 2 stitch pattern. I had just about given up in disgust and decided to cast off only two stitches, allowing me to maintain the pattern but leaving me with two extra stitches when I found some excellent advice here. I am going to follow C’s method in the very last comment. In fact as you can see on the right I have already started following her advice.

So far, so good, though I did have one horrible moment at the end of the second cast off row. As I knit back to where the first stitches had been cast off I found that I had exactly the right number of stitches to knit the pattern as normal (ie either one too many or one too few). After having a quiet little hissy fit in the clinic waiting room (I was waiting to be called for my morning bloodwork, yes I do have trackmarks, it’s one of the many charming things about fertility treatment), I realised that the decreases were fine, I had just dropped a stitch a few stitches after the first cast off. Thankfully I only had to unknit a little to get back to the problem, which was easily fixed.

In other news my neighbours are currently awaiting the birth of their first grandchild so I went yarn shopping today. I came home with fabric. I couldn’t really afford the yarn I wanted from my LYS, which I suspect would not have been appreciated anyway (I am sure the knitting would have been appreciated but my feeling is they would actually prefer acrylic to wool), and the yarn at the craftstore was more nasty than cheap. Instead I bought some gorgeous green and purple velour cord to make a super simple quilted blankie. I have two more babies to make gifts for this year whose parents WILL appreciate nice yarn so I will save my knitting for them.