Casting on the smart way!

We're declaring today the first day of summer! It's Cast On Day for our Summer '15 Knit-A-Long, and we've even got the weather cooperating. So following on from our stitch markers technique post on Tuesday, we've got a nifty trick for managing the cast on for Chicane. The first part of the pattern involves casting on 173 stitches, and then placing markers to divide the row into the lace pattern repeats. So we thought: why not use markers right from the start? It'll make it easier to make sure there's the right number of stitches, and then you're all ready for the lace a few rows down the road. We're going to use two different sets of markers to mark different things. First of all, there'll be two markers to separate out the edge stitches from the lace section, one at each end. We're using little loops of contrasting coloured yarn for all our markers here, and these two are beige. There's two stitches in the edge portion, so we cast on two stitches, then place our first beige marker. Looking ahead a few rows, the lace will be worked in twelve-stitch sections, and marking each section makes keeping track much easier. So we'll need a number of markers in another colour, and we're using purple here. We cast on twelve stitches after the beige marker, and pop on a purple one... ...cast on another twelve stitches, add another purple marker, and so on, right to the end of the cast on. The last lace repeat has thirteen stitches in it, and right after that comes the second beige edge marker. Cast on the last two stitches, and we're away to the races! The very handy thing about casting on with markers like this is that the counting is really easy: twelve-stitch sections between each pair of markers except for that thirteen-stitch stretch at the end, and then all you have to count is the number of sections. And then we're off! Why not head on over to the Chicane KAL thread in our Ravelry group for inspiration? It's going to be a great summer!