Scrap Shawl Redux: How I knit on the edging

I meant to post about this sooner, but didn't take photos while I was working on the actual shawl, so have done a bit of re-creating.

Let me say right now that I love knitting on edgings. I don't know why, it is such a particularly satisfying maneuver for me to work. It just is. Let me also say at the beginning that if you have never knit on an edging before it is likely to take more yarn and more time than you anticipate (especially true for a wide lace piece). For a simple narrow one, like the one I used on the Scrap Shawl, the process just rolls right along.

For demonstration purposes, we will pretend that this is the body of the shawl, worked to full size. I have just finished the last (Wrong Side) row, and have turned it, as if I were ready to start a Right Side row. But instead of knitting away,

I cast on the number of stitches needed for the edging (in this case, five). Most of the time, I just continue with the working yarn from the shawl body, but I'm using a different color here to make the pictures clearer. In either case, I am now ready to work the first row of the edging pattern. I think of the first and all odd numbered rows as "incoming" rows, because they are working in toward the body of the shawl.

I work up to the last of the edging stitches. Then I work a decrease that uses the last edging stitch and the first of the waiting shawl body stitches. This does two things. It joins the edging to the body, and it uses up (in effect binds off), one body stitch. You could just k2tog, but I like the look better when I do this:

Sl 1 (the last edging stitch)

K1 (the first body stitch)

psso (pass slipped stitch over)

Then, as I have come to the end of the row (as far as the edging is concerned) I turn everything and work the second (outgoing) row.

Now I will turn and work the third (incoming) row, working the join again on the last edging and first body stitches. And so on, and so on.

Every two rows of the edging pattern worked will use up one more stitch from the body.

The edging pattern I used goes like this

Row 1 (incoming): k4, sl 1, k1, psso

Row 2: k5

Row 3: k1, yo twice, k3, sl 1, k1, psso (seven edging sts)

Row 4: k4, k into the first wrap of the yo, p into the second wrap of the yo, k1

Row 5: Bind off 2, k3, sl 1, k1, psso (five edging sts)

Row 6: k5

Now on a fine lace shawl, one would want to calculate the number of body stitches to be used up and the number of edging row repeats and make sure that the whole thing worked out symmetrically - especially if the each edging repeat had many more rows. But this was a very casual project, so I just fudged it. I did work in a little extra ease for the edging on either side of the point of the shawl, by working a couple of the incoming rows without a join. Just knit the last stitch instead of doing the sl 1, k1, psso; turn and work outward.

How, I Made the Shawl, More of Less, Part II

OK: about color. This was totally improvised, too. I had several skeins/part skeins of worsted weight yarn sitting around. I pulled out the ones that were in the blue/blue grey range, plus one teal. I started with one color and kept adding in others, switching around as the spirit moved me. I tried to alternate between primarily a darker hue with light contrasts and primarily a lighter hue with darker contrasts, but only is the most general fashion. Toward the end, I ran out of the darkest blue, so I added in some dark grey and used that to finish things off.

Scientific, huh? But playing around with the colors in a totally improvised way was part of the fun of the knitting. Sticking to a nearly monochromatic color scheme ensured that there would be at least some unity among all the color/texture activity.

I did try different things with the color transitions to add to the variety.

"A" is obviously all stockinette, smooth, crisp transition. "B" is interesting. Worked only one row of dark blue, but because it came in a reverse stockinette section, the color peeks through in two rows at the top and bottom of the narrow ridge. "C" is a single garter ridge. Here I introduced the new color on a Right Side row and knit back in the same color. It would have looked quite different if I had started the new color on a Wrong Side row.

As you can see, there were times when I used a given color for only one row. There is a slight trick to this when knitting flat.

Here I've added in green and knit my row.

Normally, when I reach the end of the row I turn my work and purl back.

But, Oh No!, I want to use the red yarn that is way over on the left side. I really don't want to cut it off and rejoin. So I do not turn the work at the end of the green row. Instead I just slide all the stitches over to the right

where I can now pick up that red yarn and knit with it. Of course, this only works with a circular or double pointed needle. If I had been working on a traditional straight needle, the knob at the end would be in the way of knitting the next row.

For the most part, I carried unused colors up sides on the theory that would leave fewer ends to weave in later. The theory was good enough on that count BUT once I had four colors going at once, often with colors coming off each side due to that slide the needle method, and the whole thing was getting bigger and more bunched up on my needle by the minute, well, turning at the end of a row tended to put things into quite a tangle.

Also, carrying 2-3 unused yarns up the edge got pretty messy looking. It would have been better if I had remembered to wrap the working yarn around the unused ones every row (which in all the improvisatory excitement, I didn't). But even so, it would have been less than ideal for an exposed edge.

Moral of the story, I should have sucked it up and done less carrying up the edge, limited it to no more that 1 yarn at a time if possible, and just dealt with more weaving in.

How I Made the Shawl, More or Less, Part I

The I-Cord edging didn't work so well, so I just crocheted along the top edge to catch the yarn floats in place. It looks, shall we say, rustic, but it's relatively unobtrusive.

Kmkat asked if I planned to describe my method, and in somewhat rambling, perhaps semi-incoherent fashion I'll give it a shot. It's really more "method with madness", or "basic structure meets chaotic improvisation."

I'll start here with the basic shaping, which happens to be a very standard triangle shawl knitting gambit.

If you start with a very few stitches, and then increase one stitch at each side every other row, you will build up a triangle (familiar to anyone who has ever worked the standard Grandma's Favorite dishcloth). It looks something like this.

If you simultaneously work two of these triangles side by side it looks like this

Notice that the "side" edges of the knitting as it is worked will form the "top" edge of the shawl. Since you are working "top down" as it were, this is the edge that appears at the bottom of the sketch. Clear as mud?

So I started by casting on 5 sts and marking the center stitch.

On every RS row I worked one stitch, made a yarn over for my increase, worked to the marked st, yo, worked the marked st, yo, worked to the last st, yo, worked the last st.

Every WS row was worked even.

Now I will say right here that I would have had neater edges if I had worked two or even 3 edge stitches before the first increase and after the the last increase. So do as I say, not as I did.

Each row was either all knit, or all purl. Actually, I meant to work the first and last 4 sts of every row in garter, but I forgot a lot. I just improvised whether I would knit or I would purl any given row, and this resulted in some sections of stockinette, some garter ridges/garter sections and a couple of reverse stockinette sections. I did try to keep the center stitch in stockinette (knit every RS row and purl every WS row), but sometimes I forget this, too.

AT THE SAME TIME, I did a little compensating in the shaping. I'll backtrack to explain. If you work the shaping as described above all in garter stitch, you end up with nice even right triangles, because garter has a lovely gauge characteristic: the height of two rows generally equals the width of one stitch. But the proportions of stockinette are not so accommodating, and much of this shawl is either stockinette or reverse stockinette. So instead of a nice right triangle I was likely to end up with something more like this

I've exaggerated the distortion a little for illustrative purposes.

So to fill in the shaded areas

I threw in extra increases at the side edges every 4-6 rows, or whenever I remembered. I placed these about 5 stitches in from the edges and used M1 instead of a yarn over, so they would show as little as possible. I did not do extra increases on either side of the center stitch. Placing extra increases at the sides only had the (to me) advantage of increasing the width of the shawl a little more than the depth.

So I continued in this fashion until I was tired of it, but I did make sure that I went long enough that the top of the shawl would equal my "wingspan", that is the length from fingertip to fingertip when I hold my arms straight out to the sides.

Enough for one day. I'll post something about color changes and knitting on the edging later (maybe sooner-later, and maybe later-later, we'll see).