Knit Together with Cynthia MacDougall
This article was drafted at a time of year when summer and cocktails are wishful thinking. It was figure skating season, when I watch single and pairs skaters form graceful patterns on the ice by leaning into the edges of their skate blades.
Knitters can make fluid edges, too. Some ways of achieving this are very subtle, such as not making a slip-knot at the start of the long tail cast on or slipping stitches at the ends of each row to create tidy edges on the sides of the work. I-cord can also be used to edge pieces of knitting.
I-cord was mentioned by Elizabeth Zimmermann in her book, Knitting Workshop. She notes that the technique was known before, but was not widely used. Ms. Zimmermann remedied that by bringing i-cord to the forefront of the craft. In Knitting Workshop, she used i-cord as a stand-alone item, and applied it to the sides of knitted fabric. She even used it to bind off pieces.
Years after she published her book, the i-cord cast on was developed. At that time, I realized that I could now surround a knitted piece with i-cord. What a puzzler, to be able to hand a piece of knitting to your friends and ask them to figure out where it begins or ends!
Read more in our Summer 2013 issue.
Article by Cynthia MacDougall
www.CGKnitters.ca
blog: cgknitters.blogspot.com
ravelry name: macknitnow
