I have been working on the Debbie Bliss Alphabet baby blanket, and as I knit the body of it, I kept looking at the chart for the border. I just couldn't see how the stitch number in the border would work correctly into the multiples of the blanket edge. I'll tell you, I stewed about it for about 2 weeks. Last night I decided to just do the bottom border and follow the graph and see what would happen. Well....I'm happy to say it DID work, :yay: and now I can see where my counting logic was off.
I have seen the experts in this forum advise people to start into a pattern, and often it will work out when you get going. In this case that was really good advice.
PS: If I tried to explain what my wrong thinking was, it would take about 3 paragraphs, so I won't go into it. It had to do with 2 YO's on the first row, which didn't have to use one of the existing stitches, but I was counting them into the existing stitches.:??

Ah yes, Ingrid's 'Trust the Pattern' sig has helped me through many confusions. I do the same thing - I try so hard to understand *why* it is the way it is that I get all muddled and it's only when I start actually doing it that it makes sense. Most recently it happened when I learned entrelac - I spent so long trying to figure out the stitch pattern and understand it, when it was perfectly easy to see when I actually *did* it. I still wish I knew enough about stitches and what they do to create my own stitches though - that would be so cool :-)

isn't it so true? "Trust the pattern"--I am not well-versed enough in knitting and pattern reading to read it and "see" it. So I just do it, "jump in" I keep telling myself.

I'm glad it worked for your border!

aha! it is!