Edgings

Last night I finally got to finishing my latest scarf (shawl? where's the line between a scarf and a shawl?) in the works.

The yarn is Caterpillargreen Yarns Merino twist fingering in color Weekend, classic striping. (Love it!!!) It looks like the company just changed their name from Caterpillargreen to Gauge Dye Works. They make their yarns in three different striping patterns: classic strips, accent skeins, and shawl stripes. The shawl stripes skeins are specifically dyed for triangular shawls so that the sizes of the stripes remain the same even though the rows get longer. Ingenious! However, for my plan the classic stripes worked better since I wasn't going to make a triangular shawl. (You should check out their website. It looks like the colors are smaller batches, so they tend to run out, but they also have gorgeous shawl kits that you can pre-order to make sure you get the colorway you want.)

I'm not using a pattern, I just made up the short-row sections as I went along with a mental image of what I wanted the shawl to look like. I wanted a sea of undulating colors that grows sort of organically without too much symmetry. I was quite pleased when it worked out without too much ripping back.

I knew I wanted an edging with more of the YO-k2tog holes that I had used throughout the shawl to accentuate the sections. I had used this edge from Aestlight in two shawls already:

It's one of my favorite edgings, relatively simple and fast and works particularly well for shawls that utilize garter stitch. And it makes for a pretty, wavy edge. This time I wanted a few more holes, though.

I experimented with a couple of different size triangles for the edge, and also tried making the triangle in the reverse direction. The triangles can either be made by increasing one stitch on every other row and then casting off on the last row of the triangle, or by casting on at first, and then binding off one stitch at a time. It turns out the latter is slower, the cast on edge is sloppy, and the bind off edge is bumpy. So no good. The first option is faster to make and looks neater.

The idea is to increase one stitch on every other row to shape the triangle. If I wanted more holes, I needed to pair up each YO with a k2tog, except for one that would be the increasing YO. Depending on how you want it to look, you could place the extra YO (the increasing YO) at the beginning of the row or at the end. I decided to place it at the end, and then leave a two-stitch garter edge. Here's what my little triangles look like:

(Turns out that when you have a table made out of reclaimed barn wood, you can pin your knitting directly to the table. Handy!)

Lacy Triangle Edge pattern:

Set-up row A: With shawl stitches on the needle, cast on 3 stitches by backwards loop CO. Turn.
Set-up row B: k2, k2tog.

Row 1: s1wyib (slip 1 with yarn in back), YO, k2.
Row 2: k3, k2tog.
Row 3: s1wyib, k1, YO, k2.
Row 4: k4, k2tog.
Row 5: s1wyib, YO, k2tog, YO, k2.
Row 6: k5, k2tog.
Row 7: s1wyib, k1, YO, k2tog, YO, k2.
Row 8: k6, k2tog.
Row 9: s1wyib, (YO, k2tog) twice, YO, k2.
Row 10: k7, k2tog.
Row 11: s1wyib, k1, (YO, k2tog) twice, YO, k2.
Row 12: k8, k2tog.
Row 13: s1wyib, k to end.
Row 14: bind off 6, k1, k2tog. (To get a pointier tip, I knit the first bind-off stitch rather than slipping it)

Each triangle casts off 7 stitches of the shawl edge. You can easily make the triangle bigger or smaller by adding rows. Note that I had a row of YO-k2tog holes at the edge of the shawl before I added the triangle edging, so those holes are not part of the edge pattern.

What is your favorite shawl edge pattern?