Waving hello...
My favorite thing about feather and fan is what it does to the border. It starts out straight like any other piece of knitting, but the combination of yarn overs and K2TOGs create this marvelously undulating wave that has always been my favorite edging. It’s just so pretty.
I’ve done it on scarves and shawls, I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me to use it in a cowl. There’s something so delicate about a scalloped edge up there by your collarbone. It even looks pretty just spreading out from the circular needles like some yarn-y flower petals. I grin every time I look at it.
I’m frustrated that I can’t
quite capture the right color of this yarn—a deep teal. It’s as if the camera can only register it as green or blue but not the marvelous in-between color that it is.
The ingenious combination of feather-and-fan interspersed with a single smart cable gives this piece a terrific texture and just enough heft to hold up against your neck. With just a few stitch tricks like these, an impressive accessory (and lots of compliments) are surely in my future. Not to mention—because this is Chicago, after all, a lightweight garment that will offer a nice bit of warmth without being too bulky.
Sure, I’m only a couple of repeats into the pattern, but sometimes that’s all you need to know you’ve got a good thing going.
Getting edgy...
Now we switch one last time—changing directions, even—to finish off the edge. It’s pretty now, in the lumpy, unfinished sort of way lace knitting always is before you block it. The edges don’t have that crispness and the material hasn’t achieved the drape everyone loves in a lace shawl.
The trouble with end-to-end edges like this is that I invariably botch the first repeat of the pattern. Because it is the first one, it’s right there on the point where I feel like everyone looks at a shawl. What should be a pretty triangle looks like a dislocated thumb, sticking out round and ugly where it should come to a delicate little point. I’m pretty sure I can block it to look better, but I’ll always know it’s there.
Go ahead, tell me I should have worked my way back and started over. I know that. But by the time I figured out what the edging was supposed to look like, I was a couple of inches into it and it seemed like too much work. One half of me rationalizes “No one’s going to notice a tiny detail like that” while the other half moans “Everyone’s going to stare at it!”
Lace perfection continues to be out of my reach. And that’s okay. I’m an eternal optimist (even if I’m not a Cubs fan—Chicagoans you know what I mean) and I always tell myself “I’ll get it next time.”
As for what you get next time? You get to see the other half of all this edging. It goes sl-ow-ly—two rows of fifteen or so stitches to every single one of the 208 stitches across the shawl. That’s a lot of knitting, even if the “Polar Vortex” is keeping me indoors.
