Picot Loops Lace Ribbon (and lace cast on)

In response to last month’s Bit-size tutorial More Ideas for Using Elements of Lace Edgings in New Ways, Rita wrote:

Your design process is fascinating reading. There’s so much work that goes into designing, which one might not realize unless they have the chance to read about it or unless they’ve given it a try themselves. Thanks for sharing.

This month’s Knitted Ribbons project offers yet another idea for using elements of lace edgings in new ways. To discover how you can design your own ribbons as a jumping off point from other lace edging patterns, let’s start with the Picot Loops version that is included in the Knitted Ribbons pattern.

Picot Loops Lace Knitted Ribbon in chained metallic gold yarn

If you feel déjà vu when knitting the Picot Loops ribbon, then you might remember that we used that same 2-stitch sequence in the heading portion of the lace edging for Quick Lace-edged Baby Socks way back at the beginning of this year.

Thus, you can think of Picot Loops as a very stripped-down lace edging pattern that actually is just the straight heading portion. If you need a review of what we mean by a lace edging heading, click over for a moment to Knitted Lace Edgings: a working definition and basic characteristics.

Picot Loops ribbon gives you lots of practice working a yarn over at beginning of row. For this pattern, the yarn over is followed by a p2tog, just like in the baby socks edging. The difference is that the ribbon pattern is just those 2 stitches, repeated over and over ad infinitum! Eventually the hands “know” what to do, and you’ll never be confused when you encounter a yarn over at the beginning of a row again. I hope you will find it as relaxingly repetitive as do I.

Tip: Picot Loops makes a lovely lace cast on. Work twice the number of rows as you need for cast on stitches. Then pick up and knit into each yarn over hole along either of the straight edges. Example: If your pattern calls for casting on 45 stitches, work 90 rows. You really don’t need to count rows; just count the number of yarn over holes along one edge.