I’m very slo-o-o-o-wly puttering along on the border for my Cap Shawl from Victorian Lace Today. As I said in an earlier post, I first had to deal with a few little issues. To recap (get it, Re-Cap; okay I apologize for that already):
1. The chart was in garter, not stockinette (even though it was knitted in stockinette), so I changed it. (That, of course, took all of two seconds.) I just didn’t think the border would look right in garter; the rest of the shawl is all stockinette.
2. I didn’t like the rows of plain stockinette in the middle of the pattern repeat. On one hand, that provided an easy spot to use when grafting the beginning and end of the border. On the other hand, I didn’t like it. So, I took out those rows and then adjusted the math to make the number of stitches fit with the border repeats. So far so good.
3. My final little challenge was deciding how I wanted to knit the border to the shawl. [Quick aside for those who have never done this: When you knit a border onto a square or circular shawl where all the shawl stitches are still “live,” you work one stitch from the border together with one stitch from the shawl every other row. In other words, two rows of knitting decreases or “binds off” one shawl stitch. You then typically slip the new stitch on the next row instead of working it. It was how to work the two stitches together that I was thinking about.] The pattern directions told you to knit one border stitch and one shawl stitch together through the back loops on a wrong side row. I would need to do it differently because I wasn’t working it in garter. The instructions also told you to slip the stitch purlwise with the yarn to the right side. I think what she wanted was for the slipped stitch to be to the wrong side, and turned (not flat). I’m not quite sure how to describe what I mean.
This, except for its being stockinette, is how I think the shawl was supposed to look. It’s fine, and if I kept going I would have lived. But I was somewhat dissatisfied. (I purled two together through the back loops and slipped with the yarn to the right side.)
Here, I purled two together — leaving the slipped stitch on the right side. If you’re really observant, you’ll realize I’m knitting this experiment counter-clockwise, instead of clockwise. I decided the top edge looked nicer when I did it clockwise, so I stopped and started over again.
I’m not even going to bore you with some of my other variations. Can we say “just give it a rest already?” Therefore, after many (probably unnecessary) stops and starts, I knitted it clockwise: purling the two stitches together (with no twist) and slipping the stitch with the yarn to the wrong side. Do I love it? No. But it’s just a shawl, not the love of my life, so I’m finishing it and moving on. I haven’t made much progress, but that’s because doing a border this way is slow and I’ve had very little time to knit in the past week or so.
Here, for those of you who haven’t done this, is what it looks like as you knit:
Here’s a more “distant” shot, which reminds me that no one is going to be examining the border with a magnifying glass (I hope). I know it will also look so much prettier once it’s blocked. (It will, won’t it? Yes, lying is allowed. Possibly even encouraged.)
Finally, here is my photography assistant. (This is my daughter’s Chihuahua puppy. He’s always a big help.) Blame him for any shots that are out of focus.
Arrows show direction of knitting
