Genius Tips
Quick Fix: Hiding Ends Inside Your I-Cord
Dear Kay,
I’ve had a fast time of it with Andrea Mowry’s Nightshift shawl, enjoying that groove where you vaguely feel like you’re playing hooky by knitting late into the night.
Today? A little tip for hiding ends. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it!
One of the lovely design elements of the Nightshift pattern is the integrated i-cord edging. You work it as you go, not as an added afterthought.
I love this edging because it gives us a quick way to tidy up the many ends that this six-color project generates.
Three steps:
Step 1: Thread your tapestry needle. A blunt needle is better than a sharp one here.
Step 2: Slide your needle into the tube created by the i-cord. I thread at least 4 cm (2″) of yarn inside the tube.
Step 3: Pull the needle out of the tube. Snip the yarn at the surface, then gently tug on the i-cord to make the yarn disappear into the tube.
Gone! I cannot overstate the ease and joy of this little maneuver.
So happy to see our Dream State bundles heading to their destinies. Having just finished mine, I’m ready to make another one, trying a different order of colors. It makes a difference, obviously, how you assign your A, B, C, D, E, and F.
See the magnificent Spincycle Dream State bundle right here. And you’ll find the Nightshift shawl pattern on Andrea Mowry’s site and Ravelry. Our bundle is perfect for Andrea’s Inclinations shawl too!
Love,
Ann
PS All done! Here’s how my Nightshift shawl turned out. Thanks, Ashley, for the sashay!
I love everything about knitting and wearing the Nightshift. That I-cord bind off is a game changer. Ann, yours looks amazing. Mine is going in my carry-on bag today.
Beautiful!!!!!
I have always loved the Nighshift and want to make one. However, would it look as beautiful if I made it with solid color yarns? I have an embarrassingly huge stash that I have sworn to use up before I buy any other yarn. I would love to use stash yarn for this project but don’t want to be disappointed after all of that work. So, has anyone did a solid color Nightshift? What did you think? Pics please!
Definitely, I used solid color yarns. I love mine and have it on now. It is not on Ravelry, so unfortunately I can’t share a photo. I put my colors in a basket and chose randomly which would be A, B,etc. if I make another I would start with the color I want to see the most. Honestly, I don’t think you can go wrong. It is so warm and cozy.
Superfun thing to do: take a stroll through the Projects tab for Nightshift on Ravelry. You’ll see every yarn under the sun among the 7,800 projects that knitters have posted, and you can see how the mosaic stitch looks with all sorts of color combinations.
Like Kaffe hides his ends inside a circular scarf! And BTW the number of projects has jumped up to 7879 while we were reading!
Can’t wait to get started! But those pesky UFOs!
I like to think of them as “marinating.”
Worth buying the pattern just for that! Yours is beautiful.
I loved knitting Mowry’s Shift Cowl, and made two in a row it was so fun. I’d love to make the Nightshift, but not crazy about the colorway in your bundle. It would be so nice if we could make up our own bundle on MDK at the same discount for volume. Maybe?
Hi Gardenpoet! We’re stocking only this bundle of Dream State in six colors, alas. Sorry it ain’t groovin’ for ya!
I bury my ends whe. Starting the new color. Thread my needle. Bury the join in the I cord and knit in the tail from the old color
No pesky ends. Yes.
Oh wow, JoJo, that is Next Level! Love it so much–the ultimate cleverness.
I have been using i-cord as an ends hider since l learned i-cord about 20 years ago.
dumb question here, but do you secure the end in any way? Or is the tail long enough to prevent any loosening of the stitches? Do you weave in the ends somewhere first?
The long tail in the tube seems enough security for me. I love not weaving these ends, but if you wanted to be extra sure, go for it.
Ann, for the Nightshift that Ashley is modeling I assume you followed Andrea’s original order of colors? It’s lovely. Looking forward to seeing your new Nightshift too.
No, I absolutely did not follow Andrea’s order of colors, which is why you see a bigger swath of yellows and oranges, and dark blues toward the narrow tip. I just randomly assigned colors. So yours would not come out looking exactly like this unless you followed my color order. I think hers has a more even color distribution.
Recently finished my second Shiftcowl. Looks complicated but so easy and fun to make.
Or . . . you could use the published technique, Lisa’s Elegant I-Cord Edge (EIE). This technique, first developed in 2011, then published by Knitty.com (Lil’ Austin’s Blanket–Winter 2016) and Brooklyn Tweed– Patch Scarf) and in Lisa’s (Handworks Knitwear Designs) other self-published patterns, hides the contrast yarn, as you knit, so no ends to weave!!!!
A Ravelry users comments about Lisa’s EIE :
“Exploring Lisa’s Elegant I-Cord Edge. Can’t believe I missed
this when it came out in Knitty In 2016! But then I wasn’t
obsessed with Sequence Knitting and/or Broken Garter (BG)
at that point. Sometimes you just don’t see things, but then
you do. Duh. OMG! This is one of those technique innovations that makes
me want to put aside all my other knitting plans and cast on
immediately! When I favorited it my only comment was
“Squeee!” This is SO cool! It’s essentially a BG6 design for a blanket,
with an ever so smart and cool way to hide color changes in
an i-cord edge (the aforementioned Lisa’s Elegant I-Cord
Edge), which allows you to add contrast color stripes only
sporadically, with multiple MC rows between them. And the
edge is knit at the same time, with only a few ends to weave
in. Genius!
Thank you for sharing this post! I love and support Knitty, and this is gold!
Clever idea. Why has no one ever thought of this earlier? Or at least told me about it. lol 🙂
Hi Helen— I developed the EIE technique back in 2011, but because I work full time, and design on “the side” I don’t have the following (yet) to promote my designs. Jared Flood at Brooklyn Tweed had not seen the technique and was willing to publish it, along with Amy & Kate at Knitty. I plan to self-publish more designs using my Elegant I-cord Edge technique in the coming year. I am HandworksNW on Ravelry and Instagram.
I have been knitting my ends into the icord as I go, Haven’t gotten them all in there but most of them. It’s important because I get impatient with finishing!