When I was young it seemed like fringe was on everything: shirts, jackets, vests, purses, table cloths… there was even fringe along the edges of the hammock that hung in our backyard beneath the trees. I tried making fringe back then by cutting lengths of yarn and attaching them to shawls and blankets. Despite my best efforts, the fringe was always a mess—horribly uneven no matter what I did. For this shawl, I dug around in some old books, and found a beautiful solution that has apparently been around for quite a while. It results in near-perfect fringe, simply and easily.

Fringe Me is a triangle that begins with a cast on of very few stitches, and grows by one stitch at the beginning of every right side row. Once the shawl is big enough, the applied border is added, putting a line of leaves and fringe on a second edge.