I’m doing a trial run of the top half of the yoke in a spare colorway of my project yarn, just because there are so many things going on that I want to feel the freedom to experiment by using yarn I don’t care about. I don’t like frogging anymore than anybody else, and while I don’t think the first project colorway would be damaged by frogging and reworking, why take that chance when I have a colorway that won’t otherwise be used?

Waste Provisional CO and Short-Row Set-Up

I wound off about 9.5 g of the spare colorway, making a small ball which I’m corralling in a snack-size zipper bag. I don’t trust the zipper seal alone to hold the strand of yarn passing through it, so I put a small binder clip over the edge for extra insurance.

I did my usual crochet CO with a bit of the Swan colorway that I had used for my initial swatching, making 141 stitches. The waste-yarn PCO means that when I go back to work the neck ribbing, I have live stitches ready to go, rather than needing to knit up stitches through the edge of the fabric, which left a slight ridge behind the ribbing on the CotLin U-Neck. That’s also the reason for winding off a small ball of yarn, rather than leaving the usual short tail.

Since there are 7 rounds of neck ribbing, the first round worked in the project, well, swatching yarn is round 8. The short rows will start on round 10.

I worked 2 rounds, then I put open-able markers on the needles to show the short-row turning points. The red marker at the needle tips is my beginning-of-round marker (I always use exactly one red marker when working in the round, and it always means BOR. That’s a reminder to STOP so I can change to the next pattern row, write down the round number I just completed, and make other notes as necessary). The innermost short-row markers are 71 stitches apart, centered on the back neck/BOR, with the remaining markers 3 sts beyond the previous ones.

Working the Short Rows

To work the wrap-and-turn short rows, I * work to the marker, remove marker, move yarn to the other side of the work, slip the next st purlwise, move the yarn to the other side of the work, slip the st back to the other needle, turn, and repeat from *.

When I worked the subsequent short row, which was actually going to work past the turning point of the previous row on that side, I had to deal with the wrap when I got to it.

• At the end of the knit short rows, I pulled the wrap over the stitch, then did an SSK, slipping the actual stitch knitwise but slipping the wrap purlwise.
• At the end of the purl short rows, it’s a bit trickier to pull the wrap over its stitch, because you have to sort of peer over the top of the needle to insert the other needle tip into the front of the wrap. Then I P2tog the stitch and the wrap.

Years of working Cat Bordhi’s socks from her New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One helped me greatly in manipulating and hiding the wraps. Only after I had work the first three of five short rows on the knit side did I remember to slip the to-be-wrapped stitch knitwise so that it was already mounted with its leading leg behind the needle (Eastern mount), rather than in front (Western mount—my usual). That mount then allowed me, when it came time to hide the wrap, to simply work a K2tog tbl once I had taken the wrap over the stitch.

When I did the final short-row turn on each side, I put the marker back on the needle so that I would be alerted to the presence of the wrap—and deal with it properly!—when I resumed working in the round. Having those two markers (the pink and yellow) in place as reminders was quite helpful.

First Increase Round

Because the first increase round was supposed to be round 22, I naturally enough needed to know when I had worked 21 rounds.

Now, this is tricky, because the “first” 7 rounds of the swatch hadn’t yet been worked: the neck ribbing that I would work after I had removed the PCO. Since the first round in the, er, swatching yarn is round 8, I put a gold pin through a stitch near the beginning of round 10. I then put gold pins every tenth round to do my counting for me.

I worked the 50 percent increase round (K2, yo) on round 22, taking the stitch count from 141 to 211. On round 23 I worked all the yarnovers in their trailing legs to twist them shut. I then had to work evenly to the next—and final—yoke increase round, round 43. I put gold pins in rounds 30 and 40 along the way.

Second Increase Round

I was supposed to increase to 282 for the remainder of the yoke, but because of the starting stitch count, the arithmetic works out so that I actually increased to only 280. No worries! Before I started round 44, I put two markers on the needle in the midst of what will be the front stitches, about a third of the way from the “edges” of the front. As I worked round 44, I again worked all the yarnovers in their trailing legs to close them, then at each of the new two markers, I made a yarnover, taking my stitch count to 282. I worked a few more rounds, then put all the sts on a long piece of 1/8-inch ribbon, my favorite stitch holder.

I gently unrolled the edges and pinned the WIP in place on a blocking mat. This view of the back shows the gold pins marking every tenth round, with the red BOR marker still in place and the white waste-yarn PCO at the bottom.

This view of the front, again with the edges unrolled and pinned in place, shows how the back neck is higher than the front neck. The edges of the short-row wedge are obvious because of the way the white PCO slants from the level of the back neck to level of the front neck, but the turning points are unobtrusive, even in this yarn and before laundering.

Removing the PCO

I removed the PCO, capturing the 140 sts on 2.50 mm circs, the size I already knew I needed to use to work a neater ribbing in this yarn. I used a pair of 24-inch circs, as I don’t own 16-inch needles.

The front neck looked good. (I “sewed” the mid-yoke’s live stitches together with a simple running stitch using a piece of ribbon, to make it easier to take pictures by keeping the edges from rolling.)

But when I got back to the BOR, a funny thing happened: the tail, which is actually 9.5 g of yarn, was running through a stitch.

Why? I haven’t done many projects with PCOs, and I don’t remember this happening. If the tail were my normal 8-inch CO tail, I’d just pull it out of the stitch it’s trapped in, join new yarn, and carry on. But the length of this tail precludes that step (well, I could unwind the entire ball, but I’m not going to).

So I’m just going to put that stitch on the needle and work it in the usual way. I’m not going to fuss, or futz, over this one stitch, because it’s at the back neck where no one will see it. I’m certainly not going to point it out to anybody, as I feel no need to confess my knitting peccadilloes (and frankly, you shouldn’t either!).

Would it pass muster if I were going for a master hand-knitter’s certification? Well, that would depend on if the judges even found this little infelicity, especially once the neck ribbing is complete.

A little experimenting with trying to figure out which needle to tip to put this stitch on showed quite clearly that this stitch needed to be the final one of the round. As a matter of fact, if I center a P3 rib on this stitch, the purl bumps will probably hide the fact that the working yarn is going through it. Since this stitch is the final one in the round, I need to start the round with P1, then work K2, P3 around, finishing with P2 to complete the P3 at the center back neck.

(And looking more closely still at the above pic, the first stitch on the right needle, the one that’s a bit elongated, has not been worked with the tail yarn, so before I started the ribbing, I pulled a loop of the tail yarn out and made a new knit stitch through that elongated stitch and then through the crazy stitch, so that the entire round before the ribbing started was all on the same level.)

A Slight Hiccup

So I duly started the ribbing with a P1 and worked “K2, P3” around, and when I got to the end of the round, I had THREE stitches left to do the P2 to complete the P3 rib at the back neck.

What????

Then I counted. Then I counted again. And a third time. Yep, somehow I had 141 sts on the needles after removing the PCO, one more than I was expecting.

Did I count how many stitches there were on the needles after I removed the PCO and before I even started the ribbing? No, I did not. Because I knew there would be 140.

I have no idea how or why this happened, so I simply did a P2tog on the final 2 sts of the round, which hid the crazy stitch with the strand through it.

The Explanation

Oh, wait. I know why I had 141 instead of the expected 140. You lose a stitch on removing a PCO when working flat, because the two legs at the ends of the rows are not next to each other. But when you remove a PCO working in the round, the two legs at the beginning and end of the round ARE next to each other, giving you a loop between them that you can capture.

I’ll borrow TECHknitter’s example to explain. If you hold up your hand flat and count the digits, there are 5. But how many spaces are there between them? Only 4. Now bend your digits all at their bases, as though you were holding a softball. You still have 5 digits, but if you follow around the circumference of the ball, how many spaces between your 5 digits can you count off? There are now 5 spaces, because the “half spaces” that were lost at each end in the flat are now next to each other and constitute the fifth space when you go in a circle.

When you remove a PCO, the loops you grab are not at “your fingertips.” You’re instead capturing the loops at the “bottoms of the spaces between your fingers.” That’s why you lose a stitch when you remove a PCO in the flat. But when you remove a PCO in the round, you actually have 5 “spaces between your fingers,” so you have the same number of stitches as in the PCO that you worked in the opposite direction.

The Neck Ribbing

It was very awkward working that first round of ribbing, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized that it was because the other edge of the work was sewn shut to make taking pictures easier. So I removed the ribbon and let the mid-yoke edge flop around as usual. Difficulty removed.

I worked 3 rounds of 2×3 ribbing using the CO tail ball, then I worked a round of “K2, P2tog, P1” to take all the P3 ribs down to P2. I worked 3 rounds evenly on the 112 sts that remained, then BO in pattern. I also did my little trick to neaten the join of the beginning and end of the BO round.

Evaluation

I worked an extra couple of rounds on the bottom edge (towards the underarm, that is), so that I had the upper 50 rounds of the yoke done. It looks pretty good to me! (I used my small gold coil-less safety pins to keep the bottom edge from rolling, rather than “sewing” them together with ribbon again.)

The back side of the yoke still has the pins counting off every 10 rounds. The yellow marker at the center back neck is through the crazy stitch, but I didn’t take a close-up, because you can’t tell anything is screwy there.

I had 2.06 g of the CO tail mini-ball left, and I’m actually thinking I won’t try that trick with the project yarn. I might even CO right at the neck edge and work the ribbing from the get-go, rather than doing it after the fact. But I’m going to sleep on it for a night or two before I make any final decisions.