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Work a Pretty Edge on a Two-Color Project

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How to carry the non-working yarn and make a chained edge when you knit stripes.When I’m knitting a project in two colors with just a few rows of each color worked at a time, I like to carry the unused yarn up the side of the work rather than cutting the yarn and having all those extra ends to weave in.

I usually just do this by holding the non-working yarn at the back of the work and knitting the first stitch of the row such that the yarn is caught and sort of pulled up into the next row if that makes sense. (I’ll do a video soon to show you what I mean.)

This tip on working stripes from We Are Knitters also involves slipping the first stitch of each row to make a chained edge along the side. It’s super easy as long as you remember to do it, and those slipped stitches are perfect to work into if you need to pick up stitches along the sides of the project later.

I’m definitely going to give this a try. How do you carry yarn up the side of a project?

[Photo: We are Knitters.]

Comments

  1. I have just let it sort of hang. I like the idea of the chain edge along the side but need a video to understand it. My luck I’d end up with an unfinished stitch and the whole works would in-ravel.

  3. If it is going to be a raw edge, then I would do as you do, catching the unused strand at the end every time.

Have you read?

Easy Knit Baskets to Use All Your Stash

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts. 

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts. 

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects. 

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version. 

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want. 

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do. 

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like. 

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.