Irish Spring - Cast On

Laura of The Unique Sheep dyed up this trio for St. Patrick's Day and I immediately knew that I wanted to knit another Liken shawl with it.  The yellow is what really grabbed me.  When I was growing up yellow was my favorite color.  My bedroom was painted yellow, I had a clock in the shape of a sunflower on my wall, and a 3-legged stool with a sunflower on it.  Even today, my living room is painted bright yellow (which is far better than the medicinal mint green the room was painted when we moved in).

I wore one of my Liken shawls to work this past week and it inspired me to cast on.  But first I had to make sure I understood my pattern modifications.  That actually took a little more work than I thought it would as I originally knit this as part of a mystery knit along, so some of my notes referred to clues instead of just line numbers.  I printed out my project notes and a copy of the pattern and studied my shawls, which were not exactly the same, and figured it out.  This time I am formalizing my modifications and hope to publish them for free on Ravelry (if Sivia is cool with it).  I can do it without infringing on the copyright by referring to pattern line numbers.

I did make a modification to my modification.  On my other two versions I started out with 4 rows of garter stitch, instead of a garter tab cast on.  The garter tab cast ons can stretch, as opposed to giving you a firmer neck edge.  Last week I had also cast on the Snowmelt shawl by Helen Stewart and that pattern started out with an I-cord.  But instead of doing an I-cord cast on, that pattern called for picking up stitches, as you would with a garter tab cast on. That seemed to me to be making your point the hard way.  Why not just do an I-cord cast on?  The shawl then continued with an I-cord edge.  For this shawl I cast on my 3 stitches for my I-cord, worked two rows as straight I-cord and then continued working an I-cord cast on to get my 42 cast on stitches, plus the 3 stitches of the I-cord itself.  I turned the work, slipped the first 3 stitches purl-wise, and purled across to the end of the cast on stitches.  I then used the tail of my original cast on to pick up 3 stitches in the other end of my I-cord, secured the tail, and slipped those 3 stitches.

Pattern:  Liken by Sivia Harding, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Kiri
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)