On the Edge

Okay, I promised photos, and I've got photos. When I was conceptualizing the edging for this shawl, one of the things I wanted to do was continue the chain selvedge along the top edge of the shawl. This meant figuring out a way to cast on additional stitches for the edging that would maintain this feature, and the best way to do that was to do a crochet cast on, much as one would do for a provisional cast on but using the working yarn. To do this, I slipped off the first loop on the needle and then redid that stitch as a crocheted-on stitch, then continued with the crochet cast on for the required number of edging stitches. This row of stitches would be substituted for the normal first row of the edging on the first repeat.



In this particular case, the pattern calls for 9 stitches to be cast on, but there is an increase of one stitch in the first row, so I cast on a total of 10 edging stitches. The last loop, rather than having the yarn pulled through it to make a new stitch, is simply flipped up over the end of the needle and becomes itself the last stitch.



The first row worked, then, is actually the second row of the pattern, which is worked back towards the shawl border. The final edging stitch of the row is worked together with the first border stitch (which, you will remember, is the first stitch of the crochet chain). The turn, slip and work row 3 of the chart. At the end of each even-numbered (wrong side) row, the final edging stitch is knit together with the next border stitch on the needle. I only got two repeats of the edging done because my wrist is bothering me a bit, but it's a start.



Only 59 more repeats to go before I can wash and block!

One More Thing

The first cria of the spring was born on the farm yesterday at around noon - an adorable little light fawn girl. I don't know what her name is going to be, but I'll try to get a photo taken and up soon.