le Tour de Gansey, part deux: Stage Two

Welcome back to the coverage of le Tour de Gansey, part deux; part of the Tour de France Knitalong! Today, it’s time for:

Stage Two: Garter Welts

At the end of the last stage, we’d established a sturdy but decorative cast-on. In this stage, we first knit from this cast-on 11 rows of garter stitch over half of the number of stitches we’ll use around the body of the gansey, forming a welt that will hang straight at the bottom of the sweater:

Then we knit a second one, in the exact same manner, and prepare to join them, overlapping two stitches on either side, thus creating a split, overlapping garter welt which form a non-binding bottom edge to the garment:

Next we make the first overlap, by putting two stitches from the righthand needle on a dpn, and then purling two together from the dpn and the lefthand needle, twice. This overlaps the welts, and starts the two stitch purl faux-seam which will run up each side of the sweater:

Here is the first overlap:

And here is the finished split, overlapping garter welt, after the second overlap is performed:

And with that, it’s time to move on to Stage 3: Plain Area, Seam Stitches, and Definition Ridge!