How to knit a lace edging

We've put together a tutorial on how to knit a lace edging onto a shawl. In the video below you will find instructions for how to knit a 4 stitch edging, a simple but interesting edging to complete your shawls.

Here is the chart we will be working from:

Before you start you will need to pick up all the stitches around your shawl.

Here is the transcript from the video:

So now that you’ve picked up the stitches around the edge of your shawl, it should look something like this.

You now need to turn the work so that the wrong side is facing you, and you need to cast on - in this case it’s four stitches because we’re doing a four stitch edging. So that’s One, Two, Three, Four.

Looking at this pattern, this is a wrong side row; so in order to make a lacy edge we’re going to do a yarn over, knit two together, which we do on the wrong-side edge on every row, and then we knit one, and then we have three stitches. Now the fourth stitch you knit together through the back of the loop with the first stitch of your pick up from the shawl.

So you have four stitches, you bring the yarn to the back, you turn the work. Now you slip the first stitch purlwise, like that, then you knit one, yarn over, and knit one, two. You’ve increased one stitch so you now have five stitches and you have a gap. Now turn the work back to the wrong side, yarn over and knit two together.

Knit the next two stitches and you will have one stitch left from the five stitches that you have for your edging. Knit that stitch which is on this side of the gap that I showed you a moment ago with the first stitch on the other side of the gap through the back of the loop, like that, bring the yarn to the back, turn the work.

Slip the first stitch. Knit one, two stitches, yarn over, knit two stitches. So we’ve increased another stitch. Turn the work again. Yarn over, knit two together, knit one, two, three, and knit the last stitch together with the first stitch from the shawl through the back of the loop. Bring the yarn to the back, turn the work.

Slip the first stitch, knit one, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two stitches, one, two. Turn the work, yarn over, knit two together, knit one, two, three, four. Now you’re back to the gap, knit those two stitches together through the back of the loop.

Bring the yarn to the back of the work and turn. Slip one, knit one two, yarn over, knit two together, yarn over, knit two together

On this next row we’re going to do something slightly different because we’re now making the point of the tooth, so we’re actually going to cast off four stitches.

One. Two. Three. Four.

So we have one stitch on the right needle, and we have three stitches on this side of the gap on the left needle. Knit one, two, and we knit the last stitch and the first stitch (on the other side of the gap) together through the back of the loop and we’re back to where we began with four stitches.

Here you can see I have now completed three teeth and I would continue all the way around the shawl to the end. Once all of the stitches on the shawl have been worked into the edging you simply cast off the final stitch, sew in your ends and block!