My son bought me a crochet stitch dictionary for Christmas, which made me revisit all of my crochet stitch dictionaries – like eating one potato chip leads to eating all of the potato chips. I got wondering, could I use a narrow fabric of Garter stitch with Barbara Abby’s faggoted selvage on both sides and join it up like “Bruges Crochet?”
Yes, as it turns out.
There are only 2 changes from the chart I developed to show Barbara Abby’s selvage: use a double yarn over at the edge, dropping one when you work it on the following row, and swapping out a k2tog for the sl1 k1 psso, because I can work it more quickly.
Written directions for tape:
Cast on 5
Row 1: Yo twice, k2tog, k3. Drop the last yo from the needle. Turn.
Repeat Row 1.
I’ve figured out how to make a circle from the tape, how to curve it in a half circle, how to join it along the sides of another tape, and I’ve started a heart shape, but it needs some work.
This means that we can now knit an imitation of Crochet Bruges lace – that’s kinda fun, because those are pretty, exuberant patterns. But since my patterns that look like crochet but are knit Do Not Sell, I’m more excited that we now have a lacy Join As You Go (JAGO) for knitting, that can join selvages, and bind-offs too.
There are two ways to use the loops; make your motifs, block them, then link up the loops as if you were working broomstick crochet. Just be sure you end on a spot with a yarn tail so you can catch that last loop and weave it in. The other method is to knit them together as you go, which I’ll write about once I’ve got good photos of the process.
Posts to look for in this series:
- Lacy Join As You Go (JAGO)
- Half turn in lacy tape
- Circle in lacy tape
If I alter this post to add the links to those posts, it will send out spamy copies of this post every time I edit it: if you subscribe, what is your feeling about that – should I just add a standing page to collect this information, or go ahead and update the posts?