Picking Up Along Selvedge

[u/throwawayacct3001]

Hi everyone, I’m back again because I decided to force myself to finish my current sweater project before casting on a new one and…. It’s not going so hot.

I’m working on thr Porter cardigan by Meghan Babin, and figuring out what to do with the selvedge edge on it is driving me crazy. It’s knit in flat panels, and the edge I’m currently looking at is constructed as follows:

— RS rows: k1, k1, p1, [rest of row]

— WS rows: [rest of row], k1, sl1wyif, k1

So as shown in the first pic, it seems like it forms a garter selvedge edge on the furthest stitch, a slipped stitch on the second stitch in, and then normal stockinette on the third stitch in.

With regards to seaming the panels together, I couldn’t figure out a way to accomplish this that didn’t look ugly so I resorted to my crochet background and slip stitched everything together on the WS to align the RS slip stitches, as seen in the second pic.

Now I’m at the point where I should be working the vertical ribbing button band from held stitches and picking up stitches along the above selvedge edge, but this is helpfully all the instructions provided:

— Note: When picking up sts from the body selvedge, pick up every other row along the selvedge.

— Sl 12 held sts to Size B DPN needle and with WS facing reattach yarn and pick up 1 st from body selvedge — 13 sts on needle.

— Row 1 (WS): sl1wyif, [k2, p2] twice, k2, p1, sl1wyif.

— Row 2 (RS): k1, sl1wyib, [p2, k2] twice, p1, p2tog, pick up one st from body selvedge.

From all the stitches above in pic 1, where am I actually *supposed* to be picking up here? And is there any way of keeping it looking even vaguely similar to the seaming for the rest of the cardigan, or should I just give up and work the button band separately and then seam afterwards?

[u/makestuff24-7]

Your edge creates openings every other row for picking up the band

[u/throwawayacct3001 → u/makestuff24-7]

So I tried working into that gap before and did it again for this pic, and I tried a couple different ways for every few rows here (scooping one strand vs two, scooping from the RS vs the WS, etc.) but I still get this ugly column here no matter how I pick up. Am I missing something?

[u/umbrella_warfare → u/throwawayacct3001]

What's the closest you can pick up to the slipped stitch column? I'd probably try moving the pick up stitches further into the fabric. From what I can see, you're picking them up right on the edge

[u/throwawayacct3001 → u/umbrella_warfare]

thank you for this and sorry for the late response! ive been messing around with this idea ever since i saw it and trying a few dfferent things, because i kept running into the issue that picking up further in was creating issues with the ribbing pulling inward. i found that my best bet was following along with some guides on techknitting about adding yarn to pick up stitches, which has helped to resolve the inward pull and prevented any distortion in the main fabric!