Audrey A-Long

Knit On! No-Sew Lace Edging

Here is an explanation of how I knit Audrey's lace edging directly onto the neck edge. Please keep in mind that this is my own idiosyncratic method (with emphasis on the idio!). The symbols I use are not entirely standard and if something is not clear, please let me know and I'll do my best to help. If you find a mistake in the chart or directions, I'll make a correction and repost.

I knit Audrey in the medium size (36 in/91 cm). As I mentioned in my earlier post, I decided at the "shape armhole" point to join front, back and sleeves and knit in the round to the neck edge.

At the underarm, front and back each had 102 stitches and each sleeve 76 (356 total). I cast off six stitches at each edge (the five stitches called for in the pattern plus a selvedge stitch). I combined the four pieces on a circular needle and commenced working in the round on 308 stitches. I ended up charting the decreases because the differing rates of decrease on the front/back and sleeves kept confusing me. I was traveling a great deal and it was very helpful to be able to check off the rows as I completed them.

I arrived at the neck edge with 216 stitches--70 stitches each, front and back; 38 stitches for each sleeve. Several participants had mentioned 21 pattern repeats so I made the executive decision that I would work that many too. I needed a multiple of 21 stitches, so on the last round, at the center of each sleeve, I knit 2 knit rib stitches together, purled 2 purl rib stitches together, and SSKed the next 2 knit rib stitches together. You can see the result at the arrow in the photo below. This decreased the neckline by six stitches (three on each sleeve) and gave me 210 stitches total. My reasoning was that since I was going with a wider neckline, "cupping" the shoulders slightly couldn't hurt anything and the reduction would be less visible there.

Next, I had to figure out how to distribute the decreases at the neck edge as I went along. The lace pattern has 12 rows, and every other row (the odd-numbered rows in the diagram below) would meet the neck edge. So those six rows would have to consume 10 edge stitches in each pattern repeat to use up the 210 stitches evenly. On rows 1,3,7 and 9 I would consume two stitches from the neckline (using SSSK) and on rows 5 and 11 I would consume one stitch (SSK). I used the crochet-chain method of provisional cast on to cast on 12 stitches. This method of casting on is explained in the Winter 2002 issue of Knitty.

I turned the edging and worked Row 1 (from right to left) of the chart below ending by working the last lace stitch with two stitches at the neck edge in the SSSK at the end of the row. For Row 2, I turned the edging and worked the chart left-to-right. The chart can be worked exactly as written; no reversing is necessary for the "wrong" side. Row 3 was worked also using SSSK but when I got to Row 5, I only worked one stitch from the neck edge with the last stitch of the lace border using SSK.

Posted by April at July 27, 2004 07:27 PM