In spite of the massive amounts of prose here over the last week or so, I have been knitting away at Alcazar. Here you see progress to date:


In spite of my blurry photo, you can see the fountain area at the bottom of the outer band, surmounted by the alternating pierced and flower-bearing arcade layer. The final edging is knit horizontally across the top. The edging itself is very simple - a wave edging that appears in many variants, both stockinette and garter based (it's stockinette here).

One caveat. If you have never started an edging that's attached across a needle full of live stitches, the instructions in Alcazar might leave you a bit baffled. Here's what happens.

First, you finish out the final row of the outer band but do not break off the yarn. Set it aside. Then taking a DPN of the same diameter as your circ, you cast on the requisite number of stitches using waste string and some sort of provisional cast on (the choice is up to you, but I crocheted mine directly onto my DPN). Now you've got a DPN with a bunch of waste yarn stitches on it. Break off the waste yarn leaving a small tail so the rest of it stays out of your way.

Take the main piece, with the right side facing you (vast areas of this one are in stockinette, so identifying the right side is easy). Put some sort of needle tip cap, rubber band or other plug at the end of what would have been the right hand needle of your original circ. Trust me on this as leaving this end free is a recipe for disaster.

Holding the DPN VERY close to the shawl and using what would have been the left hand needle end of your circ, purl across the provisional cast-on stitches using the main yarn. Now work the first row of the edging chart using the DPN. At the end of it you'll be back at the side where the edging is being attached to the main body. The last stitch of the edging is worked together with the next two live stitches of the shawl body by slipping it, then knitting the two body stitches together and passing the slipped edging stitch over the just-completed K2tog.

You'll find that most patterns that work an edging on like this direct that every so often the rate of attachment be increased, to make up for the fact that knit rows and knit stitches are rarely the same height. In this particular pattern, the final row of the repeat is attached by slipping the last two edging stitches, knitting two body stitches together, then passing BOTH edging stitches over the just-made K2tog.

Keep working the edging back and forth following the chart. You'll find that once you've finished the first repeat you can ditch the DPN and use the two ends of your original circ if you prefer. In my case, my only 3.0mm DPN was a non-slippy aluminum one that was driving me crazy. As soon as I could I went back to using both ends of my nice, shiny, ultra-slick Inox circ.

Although this method is most commonly seen in attaching lace edgings to live edges, you can use it to knit any horizontally-worked strip to the live stitches of vertically knit edge. You'll need to play a bit with the rate of attachment to make sure your edging lies as you like - either ruffled (increase the number of edging rows per body stitches), flat, or a bit cupped (decreasing the number of edging rows to body stitches) - but not having a seam to work is always very much appreciated.