That’s now my number one advice to any knitter.

Earlier this week I was looking at the pattern for “Lindsay” in Starmore’s A Scottish Garland and was surprised to see a section called “Stitches” that described exactly how the chart, steeks, edge stitch and cross stitch should be done. Right there in black and white, were answers a couple of burning questions that I had wondered about when first starting Firebirds. These were things that most patterns leave to the knitter to figure out on their own.

After finding this, I grabbed my Firebirds pattern to see if that pattern also had a similar section. It turns out that the amendment  send with the pattern card refers to the pattern card for that part of the pattern.  I seemed to have skipped reading the pattern card.

Here are the questions that I had.

Q: There are some long stretches of one color in this pattern. How often should I weave in between color changes?

A: When there are more than 7 stitches of one color then weave in the yarn being carried half way between color changes.

Q:  How long should my yarn ends be when I change colors at the front?

A: Leave a 5 cm tail.

Starmore patterns are very detailed, easy to understand and mostly error free. I did however find one small error on my version of the Firebirds amendment when starting the cuff. It says to start the cuff on round 8 of the chart and then list the first row of the cuff as round 12.  I started at round 12.