So at the end of the entry on friday--in short--I said to cast on 320 stitches, using an elastic method in your background color, join being careful not to twist, and knit 2.5 (ish) inches in K2 P2 bi-color (corrugated) ribbing. This time around I'm purling in the background color and knitting in the foreground or contrasting color.

But wait, you ask, "you said the key number of stitches was 344?" Yep it is. And then you ask, "Why cast on fewer stitches? and why did you choose corrugated ribbing? and while we're at it, I think I want to have a hemmed edge or make a cardigan and not a pullover!"

In response: Hang on, I say. This week we're going to cover all these issues. Starting today with why I've chosen this ribbing and why I decided to do this. Tomorrow we'll cover the stitch count issue.

A lot of my sweaters of late have had provisional cast ons, followed by turned hems. I'm putting ribbing on this one, because it's been a while since I've done a sweater with a ribbing, so this seemed like it would be the case. Also, for some reason that I can't explain I'd never done the "cast on in the color your going to purl in" trick, even though it is in retrospect pretty obvious. By doing it this way, you're not purling into stitches of a different color, and this keeps the ribs more "clean looking."

Also, I think that this pattern is very small scale, and a little bit of a different texture seemed like a good idea.

If you want to put a hem on this one just cast on 344 (provisionally) with a crochet chain and the background and start into the pattern on the next row. You could knit the facing first, but I've always found that hems sew down better when done last.