What Would You Do in this Situation?

I need an opinion here. What do you do if you have a marker sitting between two stitches you need to knit together?

For illustration purposes, let's say I have 10 stitches on my needle and I have placed a marker between stitches 5 and 6 (making 5 stitches on either side of the marker). The row to be knitted looks like this:

Row 1: K4, k2tog, k4

What would you do?
  1. Slip stitch 5 to the right needle, remove the marker, slip the stitch back to the left needle, then knit two together.
  2. Do #1, then place marker on the right needle.
  3. Do #1, then slip the stitch just worked back onto the left needle, place marker, slip.
  4. You can't k2tog while there's a marker between the stitches! There is a problem with the pattern.

Comments

RobynR said…
slip, remove, slip back, ktog . . . but I'm a process knitter
Helen said…
well...
if I wrote the pattern , I want the marker before that st, whatever happens to it, so I'd slip, remove, slip back, pm on right needle, k2tog.

(note, were it ssk, I'd put the marker AFTER the decreased pair.
LaurieM said…
I let the knitting tell me what to do. I try it one way, and if it looks stupid or doesn't work, I try it another way. You didn't mention if you're shaping a hat or making lace. Without seeing the knitting, I couldn't possibly know which would work best.
Katy said…
it depends... is there any more information in the pattern? What are we making? is the important thing to mark the distance from a particular side of the knitting, or a distance from some other point, or the middle or a movable line of decreases and increases? More information is necessary.
Interesting. So it sounds like it's something that occasionally happens in patterns, and what to do really depends on the situation. I guess the real problem is that the pattern isn't explicit enough because it does not indicate the purpose of the marker.

If I were to try to apply an algorithm to this problem, I could solve it by placing a marker that would behave as the pattern author intended (which could be any one of the four scenarios, in fact.) When I go to decrease across a marker, the type of marker would dictate the end result.
Sarah said…
Part of it depends on where the marker is and what it's doing. Where exactly is it? On the blue sweater? It's probably a matter of lining up the decreases as intended.
But you know, it never hurts to check the errata, even if you don't think there's a problem.
TurnipToes said…
Oi!
I have wondered this one before. I believe it was when I was doing the saddle shoulders portion for a seamless hyrbrid.

I would slip, remove marker, slip back, k2tog, then put marker on right needle.

But I agree it depends on what the items needs to do. I knew I needed the one part to stay the same size while the other was decreasing. Then I would count, count, and recount for a couple rows to make sure it was right, haha!

Popular Posts