Home / Stuck on a pattern step
A simple guide to the three pattern steps that need math: spreading increases evenly, picking up stitches, and casting on for your size. Each one has a tool that does it for you.
Patterns love “increase 12 stitches evenly across” and leave the arithmetic to you. The Increase & decrease evenly tool turns it into exactly what to knit: “decrease 12 evenly” on 100 stitches in the round becomes (K7, K2tog) ×4, (K6, K2tog) ×8, and you end with 88.
Any single increase or decrease works. Just maybe not M1LP (make one left purlwise): it's still the stitch I hate the most.
Open Increase & decrease evenly
“Pick up and knit” along a neckline or a front band always asks the same question: how many? Put in the edge and your gauge, and Pick up stitches gives you the count and the rhythm. Along a side edge of 60 rows, at 22 stitches and 30 rows to 10 cm, that's 44 stitches, about 3 for every 4 rows.
I never match a pattern's gauge, so after my first sweater I always had to redo the math. Cast-on from gauge does it for you: a 20 in wide piece at 22 stitches to 4 in means 110 stitches, or 112 for 2×2 rib in the round.