I'm so happy you'll be joining me while we knit this poncho together. This should be a lot of fun and a great way for all of us to learn a few new things and share our work with each other. If at any time you need help, don't hesitate to contact myself (at amy@knitcollage.com) or our knitting guru Cheryl (at cheryl@knitcollage.com) Please be sure to tag your work on social media with #knitcollageKAL 

First off, a few notes about this pattern:

* The poncho is knit top down which means you can try it on as you knit and easily customize the length if you like. We'll start with the rib turtleneck and work our way down to the stripe border.

* The turtleneck rib length on my sample is 8" high and folds over cozily. If you prefer a shorter neck, you could easily do this by only knitting 3" rib mock turtleneck, or whatever you like. 

We'll get both of the below points in future weeks but I've had a bunch of questions about this, so I would like to address them now:

* If you'd like to increase the length of your poncho to be longer that 25" we recommend doing so before the Cast Away stripes are knit. This means you'll increase in the Sister portion of your poncho and maintain the stripe border look around the edge of your poncho. The stripe area measures 12" in length, so keep that in mind when adding in rows of Sister yarn. If you decide to do this, you may need an extra skein of Sister yarn. 

* If you'd like to decrease the length of your poncho to be shorter than 25" we recommend removing 1 Cast Away stripe - this will remove approximately 4" from the body length. 

And now let's get started and talk about the all important GAUGE swatch!

Before you cast on, please make sure to do a gauge swatch. Your gauge should match the gauge of the pattern- 1 3/4 stitches per inch in stockinette stitch on size 17 needles (the larger needles). This will ensure that when you knit your poncho, it looks like ours and is not knit too tightly or loosely. You may find that you need to go up or down a needle size to match our gauge. This yarn has a slubby texture with thick and thin areas, making gauge a little trickier to measure. A gauge range of 1 1/2 to 2 stitches per inch is perfect - more on this in the video above. If you need help learning how to cast on using the long tail method- watch this video.

Next up - let's cast on and join our knitting to knit in the round. I'll do a quick demo on how to do that and how to knit a 1x1 rib for your turtleneck.

You are free to of course work at your own pace however if you'd like to follow along with me, then try to finish your gauge swatch and knit the rib turtleneck area before next week's blog goes live on Nov 9th. On that date, we'll talk about how to switch needle sizes, add stitches and get started on the body of your poncho.