That’s right, I’m on the beaded border now! I started the border on May 25th, and I have do have a deadline for the shawl to be done – June 30th. In between now and then I have a week’s trip to San Francisco (not planning on bringing the shawl, I’ll be too busy seeing things!), a couple weeks of unemployment, and some work. Let’s call it 24 days, because I also have to block this baby. The edging is made up of a a 20-row pattern repeated 56 times around the edge of the shawl. That means I need to do 2.33 repeats per day. So far, I’m ahead of schedule, but I have spent the past few days hanging around the house and knitting.

I am cautiously confident though. I feel like I’m getting a rhythm going with the beading. I pick up 3 beads on the crochet hook at once, which saves a little time, and the actually knitting is pretty easy.

I did have to make up my own way to start this border though. It is a knitted-on border that knits 1 stitch of the border together with 1 stitch of the main shawl every other row. This attaches it and means that there isn’t actually a bind off in the whole project, keeping it nice and stretchy. You start the border with a provisional cast-on so you can graft the start and the end together. The pattern had instructions on how to do this without cutting the yarn. I couldn’t wrap my head around that part, no matter how hard I tried, so I just cut the yarn and moved on. It will look just the same, I’ll just have 2 extra ends to weave it. I think it is worth it for the lack of headache.

The pale pink line you can see in the photos is a lifeline – I ran embroidery floss through the live stitches of the body of the shawl before I started this edging, in case I messed up.

The beads are slightly darker than the yarn, and are a nice matte, frosted finish.