Uncurling Crescent - A Recipe (with awful drawings)

I love crescent shaped shawls.

I've made quite a few, sometimes following a pattern like here -  Annis by Susanna IC - here, here and here  - the In Love Collection by  Boo Knits.

Sometimes I made my own crescents by putting together a nice lace edge and a section of short rows to shape the crescent. Like here with Laminaria and here with Echo Flower (Estonian lace and its nupps) But they ALWAYS curl. 

Yes, I know stockinette curls like crazy without a proper edge. But I try. And experiment, and try again. 

This time I've knitted the stockinette section 4 times, and now it doesn't curl. In fact it isn't proper stockinette anymore.

After trial number 2 I was quite desperate and asked for help, Where, to whom? At the Ravelry Forums of course, where you can find a treasure trove of knitting knowledge and very nice people who will share it with you! I love Ravelry. Best online community in the whole world.

trial num 3
eyelet and icord bind off

What they told me - 

1 - a bigger needle helps

2 - stockinette will always curl BUT if you "break" it with some nice purl columns here and there... it will curl a lot less

3 - an i-cord bind-off is a brilliant way to finish a shawl.

So, with all this new knowledge I tried it again, while trial num 3 was an improvement there was still a lot of frakking curling going on BUT trial number 4 was a success!!!

trial num 4 before blocking

trial num 4 while blocking

And here you have my RECIPE and some awful drawings.

• 1 . Find a lace edge stitch or a lace triangular shawl of your liking (edge) better if in chart form, in my opinion
• 2 . Find a nice yarn and some needles (bigger than the ones the yarn asks for because, lace)
• 3 . Make a swatch of one repetition of the motive you like with the needles you are going to use
• 3 . Block it
• 4 . Measure it
• 5 . Decide the length of your shawl and calculate how many repetitions you need and thus the number of stitches to cast-on
• 6 . make a provisional cast-on (my favourite is the provisional crochet cast-on)
•  
• 7 . knit your lace and bind-off
• 8 . undo the prov. CO
• 9 . start the short rows/eyelets section *in detail below*
• 10 . Make an I-cord bind-off to end the project

SHORT ROWS/EYELET SECTION
In order to achieve my goals of 1 - make a crescent and 2 - avoid curling I have combined some short rows with a pattern of eyelets and purl columns.
Even though the two things must be done at the same time, I'm going to explain them separately.

short rows

first of all you have to decide between a narrow or a wide shawl.
If you want a narrow shawl you need less short rows and the number of stitches added to each short row, Z,  shall be bigger.
If you want a wider shawl, you need more short rows and the number of stitches added to each short row , Z, shall be smaller.

Then you have to decide how "pointy" you want your shawl to be.  If you want it quite pointy your Y number should be a small one, if you want it less pointy Y should be bigger.

• X = number of stitches / 2         
• Y = central number of stitches you want to start your short rows from = number of stitches second row
• Z = number of stitches you want to add to each row
• K = knit
• P = purl
• T = turn
• SSK, slip slip knit
• P2TOG purl 2 stitches together

then you follow this:

1. RS    K  X+Y/2, T 
2. WS   P  Y, T
3. RS    K until one stitch remains before turning point SSK, K Z, T
4. WS   P until one stitch remains before turning point P2TOG, P Z, T

repeat 3 and 4 until all stitches are worked

eyelets

what I did

• place a marker at each repeat of the lace pattern
• start short rows
• when a marked stitch has 5 rows over it , K2TOG, YO (make an eyelet) over that stitch and purl (RS) knit (WS) it from this moment onward - FIRST ROW OF EYELETS
• when 2 consecutive eyelets have 8 purl rows over them, make a new eyelet in the middle, and the purl column that goes with it too - SECOND ROW OF EYELETS

maybe you'll need more rows of eyelets, I had enough with that

beware!  the number of stitches between eyelets will change once they are over the short rows decreases 

I hope some of this makes sense, I really do.