About 2 years ago my Aunt put in a special order or something of the sort for 13 hanks of koigu at her LYS. That's right, 13 hanks. This was long before I knew anything about the wonders of koigu or really about the internet knitting community. About 7 months ago that koigu finally came in and was presented to me with a pattern to use as an idea. Now that I have no other excuses, Christmas, weddings etc, I have hunkered down to knit the t-shirt type top that has been commissioned of me by my Aunt. I'm thinking a plain jane with a few interesting details. I don't know what those details will be, but hopefully I will when I come to them.

So this afternoon I cast on 296 stitches, a number I got using Elizabeth's Percentage System and my trusty gauge swatch. I happen to be one of those rare knitters who sort of loves the gauge swatch, but with something like this you really can't do anything without it. I've not yet used the EPS, so I'm interested to see how it goes.

Whenever I have to cast on massive amounts of stitches I put a marker every 50 stitches or so as I cast on. This way I only have to keep track of 50 stitches at at time, not 296.


Usually when I do hundreds of stitches at a time I do a knitted cast on, that way I don't have to worry about my tail being too short. This time, however, I did a long tail cast on for a k2 p2 rib. Basically you do the regular long-tail cast on for 2 stitches, then do it backwords for 2 stitches, this aligns the cast on for ribbing. Very clever, of course taken from Knitting Without Tears by Elizabeth Zimmerman. I only had to do two tries, but I certainly cut it close: