Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,
Chatters is on tonight, bright and bold!
Some like it hot, some like it cold
Some like the Knitting Chat, nine days old!

I-cord is a neat little knitting trick that can be used whenever you need a cord - for a hat, the neck of a sweater or just for decoration.  It can be done with as few as three stitches, though I probably wouldn’t go more than six.  It can be worked by itself, applied to a finished edge, or used as a bind-off - very versatile :) Essentially, it is a little tube, a few stitches in circumference that doesn’t need lots of needles or any machinery to make - nor does it take much time.

For an unattached cord, find a couple of double point needles in a size that works with your yarn.  For this example, I’m going to cast on three stitches.  Now, turn your needle around so that the tail from your cast on is on your right and slide the stitches to the right-hand end of the needle.

Bring the working yarn up behind the needle and knit your three stitches, pulling pretty snugly on that first stitch.  It is this snug pulling up of the yarn that creates the tube by linking the third stitch with the first.  Then, without turning the work, slide the stitches back down to the right hand end of the needle and repeat the procedure.





Every few rows, give the tail of your cord a firm tug to line up the stitches and straighten out the cord.  See?  Fast and easy :)





I haven’t tried this with two stitches so I don’t know how that would work or what it might look like.  I have used as many as six stitches effectively, but the best use of a 6 stitch I-cord, in my opinion, has to be this beautiful cabled I-cord edging (see the next day’s post for the directions) over at Eunny Jang’s See Eunny Knit.  I haven’t tried this one yet either - but I’m going to!

For the longest time, I couldn’t get my head around how I-cord worked.  And then when I did get it and began to notice people talking about an I-cord bind-off, well, my brain just about melted down and leaked out my ears.  I just couldn’t figure out how that could be done.  Hah!  Turns out it’s even easier that doing regular I-cord.

This can be used to bind of almost any edge, straight, circular - whatever.  For this example, I knit a small circular piece over 36 stitches.  Here we are having just finished the last round, ready to begin the bind-off.

I’m going to cast three stitches on to the front end of needle one.  These three stitches will constitute the cord which will be attached to the knitting, finishing it off, well, rather stylishly, I’d say :)





And there they are.  You can use any kind of cast on you like (though long tail would probably be unnecessarily awkward) - backward loop, knit on, cable cast on - try them all and see what works best for you.  You could, if you wanted to take the trouble, also do a provisional cast on so that you could graft the two ends of the cord together when you’re finished.

Now, knit 2 and then knit the third stitch together with the first stitch of your knitting.  You have three stitches on your left-hand needle.  Slip them back to the right-hand needle and repeat the procedure, knitting two stitches and then knitting the last I-cord stitch with the next knitting stitch.  It’s really quite fast and creates a beautiful edging.  You can also play with the looks of it a bit.

This isn’t as clear as I’d like it to be - the flash kept washing out the defining shadows!  Very annoying.  But, you can just see the difference between the bind off (top of the piece) on the right and on the left.  The bit on the right was done with a K2tog - the last I-cord stitch with the next knitting stitch.  It results in a neat enough appearance, but the leg of the bound-of stitch clearly shows.  In fact, as a whole, the things looks like a little gate - a little yarn fence, as it were :) Running a bit of contrast color behind those legs could be a pretty touch for a little girl’s sweater or, in a coordinating color, a nice touch for a lady’s jacket.  On the left, those same two stitches were knitted through the back loops and, as you can hopefully see, it yields a very different appearance.  I think I would prefer this one most of the time.  Knitting through the back creates what appears to be simply another column of stockinette stitches so the bind-off entirely disappears into the I-cord.  I think this is very handsome and neat looking.

As for applied I-cord, the procedure is the same as above except that you have to pick up the stitches first along whatever edge you want to work the cord.

I cord can be tight; it’s a natural result of tugging on that first stitch which you have to do to pull the edges of the tube together and avoid a sloppy appearance.  If you find your bind-off with less give than you’d like, there are a couple of things you can try.  A larger needle might help.  Or, you can work the cord without attaching it say, one row out of four or five - or whatever feels right to you.  It will never show on the finished item but the additional rows will give the cord a little stretching room.

Happy Wednesday :)