I Should Stick With Socks

The poncho is creeping along.
The more rows I work, the more increases occur, the more stitches I have on the needles.
I'm at 57 rows and 136 stitches.
I have the 20" cord stacked with the 16" cord from my Denise set, which is, I think, the longest cord I've built since I've had it.

Increasing in Fisherman's Rib
In an attempt to be one of those useful knitting blogs were you actually learn something that you can apply to your own knitting, I will now overwhelm (and underwhelm) you with pictures (that will probably be too small to see since I made them thumbnail size. Clicking one should take you to my Flikr photostream where the decent sizes resign.

The pattern instructions call for working the increases by working K,P,K all in the first stitch after the marker. (Or at least that is how I'm interpreting it. And, since I'm being consistent, all my increases look the same.)
On the row after the increase row the three increased stitches are on the left side of the first marker. But I want to maintain 7 sts between my markers, so some fiddling has to take place.

Remove the marker and work the next two stitches in pattern (stubbornly ignoring the fact that you are knitting a stitch without a yarn over. I tried to stick a yarn over in on one of my first increase rows, it made things too tight) then replace the marker.

Work the next stitch (the third increased stitch) in pattern and then continue working in pattern to 3 sts before next marker.



The next 3 increased stitches are before the marker. But, again, I need that marker to be at the end of my center 7 sts. So I slip them all without working them, remove the marker, then slip the sts back.


Then I work one stitch in pattern, replace the marker, and resume working in pattern. I'm now back to 7 sts between my markers.



In this picture, if it wasn't microscopic, you can see the ribbing branching out from the previous increases, while maintaining straight ribbing down the center. Just like in the pattern picture. yippee! This wasn't happening on my, uh, second attempt. On my second attempt I was not fiddling with the markers, so the increases were growing on the outer edge of the previous increase. (huh? never mind.)

Here you see the pesky edge stitch that I keep complaining about. I have a red marker on one side and my row counter on the other to lock it in place. The problem with the edge stitch is that on every other row it can almost be worked in pattern. The pattern is K1 w/YO, S1 making YO. When I come back around to it this time the last stitch of the row will be a K1 which makes it easy to slip the edge stitch. However the next stitch after it (the first of the new round) is also to be slipped. So instead I end up working K1 w/ Yo, K1, S1. Then on the next row I'll work S1, K1, K1 w/YO.
I think you can see how the darn thing ended up taking a walk on me before.

Why am I torturing you with all this?
Well, first, I'm home with a migraine, which always makes me a little incoherent (I'm going back to bed as soon as I publish this. I had an interview at 9 am and I have another at 3 pm, so I must rest).
Second, I saw in my traffic report that some poor soul ended up here because they had searched for "increase fisherman's rib" and I realized I've complained about having to do it, but never explained what was going on once I figured it out. Hopefully I've remedied that oversight.