How Do You Like to Finish an Afghan?
Wednesday October 8, 2008
But I know some people wouldn't knit an afghan or blanket without one, so this week I want to know how you finish your afghans. Do you crochet a fancy edge or add a few rows of garter stitch? Or are you like me and you'd rather leave your projects borderless? Let us know by answering this week's poll.
And if you've got a clever time saving method of putting a border on an afghan, we'd love to hear it!
Comments
Sarah - I’m like you - I don’t like to put borders on my afghans, but I’d love to get instructions on how to knit a border as you go. Maybe then I’d be more likely to border my afghans. Thanks.
Hi, Norma
Please forgive me if you know some of this, but I want to be clear to novices, too.
To knit a border as I go, I usually start with a few rows of garter stitch, then do a few stitches in garter on the sides of each pattern row. Then I finish the piece with more garter rows.
Please note that in order to keep the garter from blending in with stockinette, it is necessary to have some of your garter side stitches be all purls. This looks the same as the traditional all-knit garter. Here is what I do:
row 1 (right side) P8, K stockinette sts, K8
row 2: K8, P stockinette (reverse stockinette), P8
it looks like this:
right side –> P K K
P P K
Arg! Here is the rest of my comment:
it looks like this:
right side –> P K K
P P K
One more try–not sure why it doesn’t like the end of my comment!
If you have a pattern stitch in which the right-side rows do not always start with K, or in which the wrong-side rows do not always start with P, then you can use a seed stitch border instead. This is just K1, P1, repeat. You can use seed stitch around stockinette as well–it’s quite pretty that way. Seed can be an odd or even number of stitches, just like garter.
Anyone else have other ideas?
Dannye
Hi Dannye-
Thanks for the information. I guess if I had stopped to think about it, I could have figured it out, but I do appreciate your helping to get my brain into gear. I think sometimes the things we think will be the most difficult turn out to have the simplest solutions. Thanks again.
I like the garter stitch rows at the start and end, too. I usually do 6 arter stitch rows and 6 stitches on each side all the way to the end and finish with 5 or 6 rows again. I have one pattern that uses purl instead of knit and the look is the same. I don’t use seed stitch very often for the borders, but it is a nice change. The only time I crochet a border is when I have lots of color change yarn ends to hide.
icord