Right As Rainbow: At Last…

…the day has arrived. We’re casting on for the Right as Rainbow cardigan knitalong!

Catherine is blogging from Greece (ooh! aah!) and I am blogging from…our move. We are moving just a few miles away, but with a kitty and a one-year-old baby and perhaps a little bit too much yarn any move is kind of crazypants. Do send good vibes, won’t you?

I’ve started the first sleeve:

Ta da! I used the long-tail cast-on, as I generally do. What did you use?

It took 10 rows for me to get 1.5 inches of ribbing. This pattern asks that we increase every fifth row until we reach a certain number of stitches, leaving up to the individual knitter what increase she uses and where she places the increase. I am using the knit-front-and-back increase, and placing it one stitch from where I joined to work in the round:

Can you see the bar increases (knit front & back) in the right edge of the sleeve?

If my sense of the pattern is correct, this will put the increases under Little Miss Feisty’s arms, out of sight. You can see the increases by the little bars that appear two stitches in, every fifth round. [Indeed, sometimes kfb is referred to as the ‘bar increase.’] This makes it easy for me to know where I am in the pattern, too – I count the number of rows from the last bar to see how many I have to knit before the next increase. This also makes it easy for me to know how many total rows I have knit – I count the number of bars and multiply by five. If you need help with kfb, check out this video from knittinghelp.com or the one below:

You’ll see that I am using the magic loop method for the sleeve, rather than the DPNs that Stephanie recommends. I actually love working with DPNs, but in this case I know that I’ll be carrying this project around with me as we complete our house move over the next week. So I can’t risk losing a DPN (or breaking one, as I did last year). Magic loop it is, then, and I do enjoy it:

Now, that said, Stephanie has provided a very helpful collection of photos showing you how to join DPNs without a hitch. [I’m really impressed with the way she presents this pattern. Anyone else?]

So – which are you using, magic loop or DPNs (or even two circs)? Have you settled on your colors? Tell us all about it on the discussion thread or my Facebook page, or in the comments below.

Finally, giveaway news. The winner of the Alpaca Silk was Eva – congratulations! And don’t forget that you have until Friday to sign up for the Silver Screen Knits update list and be entered in the drawing for the Fyberspates Sparkle Silk.