Decrease question
 

Hi, first time posting on this site and I'm looking for a wee bit of help pls.....
I'm ( perhaps somewhat ambitiously considering my lack of knitting skill) knitting a wee cardigan for my soon to be born niece or nephew. i'm on the front left section, have come to the armhole slope and I'm a little flummoxed by this section of instructions....

My pattern says....

Dec 1 st at armhole edge on next 3 rows (which I've managed to do), then on foll 2 alt rows, at the same time(this section is in bold font!) dec 1 st at front slope edge on next and every foll alt row

Can anyone shed some light on why the bold writing is there, and what exactly i'm to do. I would be eternally grateful.

Cheers x

Hi and welcome!
It's bolded because the pattern wants you to decrease at the armhole edge at the same time as you decrease for the front slope. So you should decrease at the armhole edge on rows 1,2,3,5, and 7 and on the front slope edge on rows1,3,5,7 etc until the pattern says that you've done enough decreases at the front slope. Often this instruction is bolded so that you don't do one set of directions after the other but do them at the same time.

What salmonmac said. You're lucky, actually, that it was bolded and hard to miss, some aren't and get overlooked or worked wrong and then it's nothing like it's supposed to be. You've made it this far in the pattern, I'd say your skills are improving quickly!

Thank you both for getting back to me so quickly!:)

That sounds much more straightforward now...it's great to have experts on hand to ask for help from!

Ok...i'm off to pull back the last three rows, because i didn't decrease at the front slope from the start (not that i knew what the front slope was...that was probably going to be my next question!)....i thought those bold instructions only applied to the 'on foll 2 alt rows' section! Thank goodness i asked, otherwise baby would have been wearing a wonky cardigan!

Cheers again for your help. :)

It's my big complaint about the way patterns are written - far TOO little detail, which opens things to ambiguity (and teeth gnashing).

I find in the main that once I've learned how to do something, I can generally figure out how to get things worked out even if the pattern is unclear in some respects. Added to everything else, the things I find difficult to understand are a walk in the park for others and the things others can't understand I look at and think, what's the problem? Patterns are written by different people with different ways of seeing things, from different regions and countries, and by people of different ages who might have been knitting for most of a century or not very long at all. It's impossible, I believe, to write a pattern that everyone will find understandable and clear. I still have to remind myself that someone working a jumper pattern is making a sweater. If we all understood every pattern, every time, we wouldn't have knittinghelp.com. Maybe that's the bright side, we get to come here. :thumbsup: I'm very glad we have men, women, some younger members, people from Austalia, Canada, UK, and even the U.S. and who knows where else here; brand new knitters, Dr. Who scarf knitters; and for me those who someone else deemed to be the goddesses of knitting and the ones I can actually give assistance to. That makes me feel good.