Knitting the Lace Edging of Pretty Awesome Yarn Pouch – Part 1

There is lots going on in the little lace edging that starts Pretty Awesome Yarn Pouch. This bit-size project is packed with opportunities to learn something new, or re-discover something you hadn’t seen in a while.

Here is a run-through of some of the interesting points I wanted to share. To not overwhelm you with all of them in a single article post, I am going to split the discussion of knitting the lace edging into 2 parts. This Part 1 will cover through round 6.

 Needles for Knitting Lace in the Round

We discussed last week about how we would be going around with lace for this project. Pat asked: ” Circular needle length – Ok I know this is going to sound pretty silly but what length should the circular needle be. “

For the majority of this project, I used a 16″ circular needle. Later as the stitches decrease to form the bottom of the pouch, I used double point needles. You of course could use double point needles throughout, or two circulars, or even one long circular using the magic loop method. Your choice: any of them will work for knitting lace in the round.

Join Without Twisting

After casting on stitches, there is the usual “Join into a round, taking care not to twist sts.”

Tip: After knitting one round, re-check that your stitches are not twisted. If necessary, you can easily correct a twist in your circular knitting after completing the first round.

This is possible because after knitting the first round, there is only one strand of yarn between the first and last stitches of the round. Make doubly sure that your stitches are not twisted before proceeding onto the next round, though!

Stitch Markers

It is important at the very least to use a stitch marker or similar to recognize where the round begins and ends. I like to use an obvious color for the end of round marker so that it is easy to see when I should start the next round of the pattern.

Tip: If you don’t have a different color marker, the yarn tail from your cast on can be used to mark the position where the round ends.

Also, it is helpful to place markers to separate each stitch multiple (i.e. every 16 sts for the lace edging stitch pattern of the yarn pouch we are doing). This will make it easy to re-check your stitch count often and spot little mistakes before they become big problems.

Placing a Bead

We don’t long to wait for the beading fun to start with round 1 of the lace stitch pattern. The method of placement we use for this Yarn Pouch project is hook bead-k1.

1. When you come to the stitch in the pattern where you need a bead, use a tiny crochet hook as shown here to pull the loop of the stitch through the bead. Note: If you do not have a tiny crochet hook that will work, you can use one of these other options.

2. Then place the stitch loop onto your left-hand needle and knit the stitch as usual.

Technical note: hook bead-k1 pushes the bead into the row below. There are other methods of placing beads that result in other positioning such as same row, or even between rows. Obviously these are not equivalent and are used for different design effects. Are you interested in seeing more about this in future projects?

Twisted Left-leaning Decrease

The left-leaning decrease that I chose for this lace stitch pattern is the k2togtbl. You can substitute ssk (or equivalently sl1-k1-psso), but the look will be subtly different.

Technique note: k2togtbl twists the underlying stitch loops of the decrease to produce a sharper, more distinct line along the left side of the lace holes than would be the case if using ssk.

“Real” Lace

After working a few rounds of the stitch pattern, do you notice the single strands of yarn that separate the lace holes? This is the distinctive spider web appearance of knitted lace (vs. lace knitting), or what some purists might term “real” lace, lol.

Technique refresher: Knitted lace is a knitted fabric where the holes are made on every row/round.