Shawl Edges: Smooth or Pointy?
A shawl isn’t done until it’s blocked.
Not only does blocking make your fabric look better, it gives you the opportunity to add another characteristic to your shawl.
The simplest blocking question is about your shawl’s edge.
Do you want it smooth or pointy?
Smooth.
Pointy.
Smooth.
Pointy.
Do you want the edge of your shawl smooth or pointy?
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These photos are all part of a shawl collection I’m working on. Sign up for the mailing list to know as soon as it comes out.
How to Thread a Lifeline
So if you follow me on instagram or twitter you might have caught the ripping incident that happened last week.
The short story: I cursed a lot and ripped out a couple inches of knitting.
The slightly longer story: I had (for once) inserted a lifeline in my knitting. BUT had to rip out to a point before I had threaded the waste yarn. 🙁
WHAT IS A LIFELINE ANYWAY?
A lifeline is a piece of waste yarn that you thread through a row of your knitting, so that if you have to rip back, or if you drop a stitch, the lifeline will catch your stitches.
Lifelines prevent your stitches from unraveling back to your cast on.
CHOOSING YARN FOR A LIFELINE
The best lifelines are ones that are skinny, smooth, and highly visible.
I usually use whatever lace weight or fingering weight yarn I have hanging around, but crochet cotton, or dental floss (the non sticky kind) also make good lifelines.
Don’t choose a color that blends right into your fabric, it just creates a headache.
High contrast lifelines are a very good thing.
THREADING THE LIFELINE
Grab a tapestry needle, and thread your waste yarn.
Then slip the tapestry needle with the waste yarn through each stitch on your needle. Remember to avoid any stitch markers. You do NOT want to thread your stitch markers onto your waste yarn.
Another way to thread a lifeline is to anchor the waste yarn to the needle and allow the needle to draw the lifeline through the stitches as you knit a row. Here’s a detailed tutorial from Knitting Yards.
BONUS PRO TIP
Lifelines help a lot more if you put them in before you need them.
my favorite bind off trick. part 2
My favorite trick for creating a bind off that won’t snap or break, involves increasing right before you bind off. I explained about the basic trick here yesterday.
In essence you’re creating a very subtle ruffle that will disappear once you block your shawl.
The ratio of stitches to increases (how often you increase) determines how pronounced the ruffle is.
Put another way, the more often you increase the more pronounce the ruffle is, the less often you increase more subtle the ruffle is.
Yesterday the directions I laid out had 1 increase for every 3 stitches, so your stitch count would increase by one third your original stitch count.
Evenly increasing one third of your original stitches works for really well for shawls with curved edges (circles, crescents, half circles, etc.)
However for squares, triangles, and other shawls with straight edges I find that increasing by a third gives you too much of a ruffle. So for shawls with straight edges, I like to increase the stitch count by one fifth. I [yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, yo, k1] around or across.
FOR A SQUARE SHAWL
1. Finish your patterning.
2. Knit 1 round plain.
3. Increase round: [yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, yo, k1] around.
4. Knit 1 round plain.
5. Bind off.
Of course if you don’t mind a little bit of ruffling you could absolutely increase your stitch count by a third on your square shawls. Or if you find that increasing by a third on your circular shawls is too much ruffle, only increase your stitch count by a fifth.
It’s your knitting, do what works for you.
