Expert: Lesley Arnold-Hopkins - 10/7/2009

Question
I'm making a buttonhole band with k1,p1 ribbing. It has 55 stitches. First, I want to reverse it from boy to girl, which I thought I had done successfully. However, I can't get it to work. One of the buttonholes will go in the neckband later. I need to put 4 holes in those 55 stitches. For a girl the directions say to rib 5 stitches,*yarn over, knit 2 together, rib 11, repeat from * 2 times more, yarn over, knit 2 together, rib to end of row. I ribbed 9 stitches, yarn over, knit 2 together ribbed 11, and it worked until I got to the next group. Then I had either 2 knits or 2 purls together. What am I doing wrong? One time I seemed to make it work on the right side, but when I turned it over it wasn't correct for ribbing.

Answer
Hi Janet,

Thank you for your question.

Your method of calculation looks fine. Because there is an odd number of stitches between the buttonholes, the holes themselves will alternately be followed by a K1 or a P1 to keep the rib correct.

Personally, I would still do a yo, K2tog to make the buttonhole, and then bring the rib back into line on the next row.


I hope that this makes sense, but please come back to me if anything is unclear.

Thanks

Lesley