Finishing Workshop: Adding Knit Edgings to Projects

Yesterday I mentioned that the easiest way to add an edging onto a knitting project — if it’s not knit as you work the rest of the project, anyway — is to crochet a border. But if you don’t like the look of crochet or don’t know how to do it, there are other options.

The most common way to add a border as you go is to cast on some number of extra stitches at the edge of the project (how many depends on the pattern stitch requirement and the width of border you want), work across all but one of those stitches, then knit that last stitch together with the first stitch of the project, or use the decrease of your choice.

Working those two stitches together makes the border anchored to the rest of the project so that there’s no finishing to do later other than the weaving in of ends.

Miriam Felton has an excellent, photo-filled tutorial of how to do this on her website, which will show you how to go about adding an edging as you bind off. This is perfect for the edges of shawls, the bottoms of top-down sweaters, the tops of bottom up bags, etc.

Have you ever knit a border onto a piece of knitting? I’d love to hear how it went!

[Photo via Miriam Felton.]

Next Pattern:

Santa and Saint Nicholas generally get all the good press, but Central European kids know you don’t want to just be good so you get presents from St. Nicholas; you also want to avoid the ire of Krampus. (He’s depicted as a human-like figure with horns and usually hairy or furry who gives birch rods instead of gifts to kids who are bad.)

If you’re the type to embrace the naughty side (or you just want to scare the children into good behavior over the holidays), maybe you’ll want to knit a Krampus sweater.

This one, from Sofie Amalie Laulund, is a top down circular yoke sweater with Krampus faces at the top and cavorting Krampuses further down the body, with some traditional Scandinavian snowflakes thrown in for fun.

Because of the large motifs there’s not a lot of room for adjusting the fit, but it is available in five sizes (the Ravelry page doesn’t say what the sizing is, and it says its worked with no ease but the photo looks like the sweater has a bit of positive ease, so if you decide to make this one just check the measurements and your own comfort level for ease when picking a size).

It also uses five colors, but there’s very little red and brown so you can probably use scrap yarn for those parts. It calls for DK weight yarn. You’ll want a background color that helps the creatures stand out. You could also work the snowflake bands in different colors if you want to mix it up.

The pattern is available in both English and Danish, and you can find it on Ravelry. This is the designer’s first pattern, which kudos to them because it’s such an ambitious (and fun!) project I’m happy to add to my collection of whimsy-filled knits.

[Photo: Sofie Amalie Laulund]

Next Pattern:

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