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:

I can’t resist a pattern that’s both useful and a little silly, and that’s exactly how I feel about the Rybka pouch pattern from the delightfully named Rat and Sea Witch.

I know you’re going to ask, because I did, too. Rybka means little fish in Polish. (And because you’re also probably going to ask, Rat and Sea Witch comes from people’s attempts to say the designer’s name, Ratasiewicz, which if you say it fast kind of sounds like rat and sea witch.)

It’s easy to make a little fish bag in different sizes to suit your needs. The pattern has specific instructions for an Airpods Pro case and a pencil case, but you could change the length easily to hold more stuff, and change the size in general by working with a different weight of yarn.

The pattern calls for sock yarn and mohair held together to make a fingering weight gauge, but you could try it with heavier yarn and see what size bag you end up with.

Whatever size you make it, this looks like a fun project for holding trinkets or everyday items. The mouth of the fish is the mouth of the bag, and it closes with a drawstring that is also the strap. I wonder, too, if you could make one of these with a small clasp frame that could be the fish’s mouth and then you could just work I cord straps that would attach to the sides of the fish.

I could also see stripes, or fish of different colors to use up your yarn leftovers. How about a sunglasses case with a little loop to attach to your bag? Once you start thinking about all the ways you could use a fish-shaped bag in your life, I think you’ll see that you probably need more than one.

If you make one of these I would love to know how it went!

You can grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Rat and Sea Witch]

Next Pattern:

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