EZ Not Easy

Last year, my guild did a KAL of the Elizabeth Zimmerman ribwarmer. Mine turned out okay, but I stuck to the basic pattern since I found all the "helpful" options hard to decipher, especially since they seemed to be randomly inserted into the whole pattern. I also knitted it in cheap yarn since I told myself the first one was just a trail run.

I just started my second one, with an embellishment (a stand-up collar) and a better yarn.

I've ripped countless times already.

The offending passage reads pretty close to the following: "After you've beetled on the neck stitches and cast on the shoulder, increase at the collar by placing a stitch marker at your first cast-on stitch and increasing on either side of the marker every R. When you have increased twice the number of neck stitches, cast off the increased stitches only." (emphasis added)

Believe it or not, after the third attempt, I did figure out the first part of those instructions. Or at least I finally figured out to increase on the neck edge & not the shoulder edge. Minor detail, you know?

Still that italicized section gave me fits. It turns out that "cast off the increased stitches only" does not mean cast off the increased stitches only. Doing that would leave a hole: live stitches for the neck, cast off stitches for the collar, live stitches for the shoulder. It turns out that "cast off the increased stitches only" means "after you have increased 20 stitches, cast off the first 20 stitches and knit across the row. Continue working on the remaining 30 stitches for ..."

The trouble with some smart people is they just cannot understand why people can't understand them. It's all clear in their heads after all.