Knitting on the edge, the lace edge

The Soothing Shawl is a roller coaster from beginning to end. Yesterday I talked about the seed stitch body, but here’s a word about the lace edging.

When you see a shawl with a plain body and a busy lace edging, you probably think the last few rows of that shawl must have taken forever! This is not the case. When you’re done with the body of the shawl, you bind off. Completely bind off, but don’t break the yarn.

From there, you cast on using the knitted cast on method. I’m attaching a video so you’re able to see just what that means. This was the first way I learned how to cast on, before I discovered how much quicker the long-tailed method was. If you’ve never done a technique like this it might not look like it makes much sense. As you knit the edge, you will pick up stitches from the edge of the shawl and knit them into the lace edging. This creates the effect of a seamless lace edge along the shawl body.

I’m not sure if it’s because this is an interesting technique that piqued my interest, or if knitting it actually goes faster, but I thought the lace edging flew and I was done before I knew it. It was a really fun knit and the lace pattern was easy to follow. Did you download the free pattern yet?

Now for colors! Personally, if I were knitting this pattern, I would do the body in Uptown Worsted Tapestry and the lace in a complementary solid color of plain Uptown Worsted. This will put the emphasis on the stitch pattern of the lace. If you have too many colors in a lace pattern the stitches tend to get lost in the various colors and go unnoticed.

Since I’m testing out Tapestry and Mist, I decided to do the body in Tapestry and the lace in Mist. Mist only has one color and white, so there’s much less going on than in the Tapestry yarn itself.

The sample of this shawl that I knit turned out so well, the yarn was very well suited to this pattern. If you like the pattern and Uptown Worsted Tapestry but aren’t totally sold on the stripe pattern you can always use two balls of yarn and alternate them every other row. This will break up the stripes, provided you start the balls in two different color sections. There are many different color combinations you could use to give this shawl a different look. All you have to do is decide what way is right for you.