I thought this day would never come. The last stripe done. The border in order. It took longer than I expected to get the look I wanted. But it’s finally finished. And, in my not-so-humble opinion, it’s a success!

Find Part I here.

I got the idea for doing a bean stitch border while working a stripe of bean stitch in another afghan. After the first 2 rows, I looked at it and thought, “Oh, that would make a great border.” I tried it on a swatch made from the yarn I was using at the time, and it came out great. So, all good, right?

Prepping for the border

Because the yarn I used was a bamboo/cotton blend, I put the blanket in the dryer on low heat for 10 minutes, to pre-shrink before starting the border. Scary, right? But it came out fine. Some slight pilling, but it also did tighten up just a bit, which was good. And now I can tell my sister-in-law that it can be dried on low heat.

Choosing the border color

This part was more difficult than you might think. I tried 2 colors that were awful. I asked around (well, I asked on Facebook) and everyone basically said “Any color but those!” People liked the blues, and I had to agree they were best. So I went with navy. I made it 3/4 to the end of the first bean stitch round, and thought… “Well, maybe not.” Frogged all that. Tried a couple dozen beans in each of the other blue shades. Guess what? (How did you know?) I ended up liking the navy best. I think.

Then there’s the adventure of using an unfamiliar yarn.

Since the cotton/bamboo has no bounce-back, it’s trickier to get the tension right for the bean stitch. It took a lot of trial and error (for real — hundreds and hundreds of stitches frogged). But in the end, it came out well. I needed to tighten up the stitches of round 1, and make them closer together together than I normally would. And I had to find that sweet spot on the bean rows, with a hook size a bit small, while keeping the tension loose enough to avoid too much stress on the previous row, but still controlled. (See why I don’t recommend this yarn?)

So let’s get to business… the pattern for the border!

---

Special stitch: Bean Stitch (Bean st)

Insert hook directly into stitch indicated, yo, pull up a loop;
[yo, insert hook in same stitch, gently pull up another loop] 3 times;
yo, draw through all 8 loops on hook, close with a chain.

Beginning Bean Stitch (Beg Bean)

Insert hook directly into stitch indicated, yo, pull up a loop;
[yo, insert hook in same stitch, gently pull up another loop hook] twice;
yo, draw through all 6 loops on the hook, close with chain.

If you’re using acrylic or wool in worsted/aran weight, you may prefer to use the smaller bean stitch (the one I’ve called “Beg Bean”) all the way across.

Here’s a great how-to video for bean stitch. Note that the beans I’ve written for here using have one more yo/pull through than the video shows.

---

Round 1: (WS) Join your lightest color to the top right corner w sl st;
*sc in each of next 6 sc2tog, work 2 scs in next sc2tog*;
repeat between *’s to next corner, [sc, ch1, sc] in corner st;
work evenly spaced scs down the side; [sc, ch1, sc] in next corner;
*sc in each of next 6 sc2tog, work 2 scs in next sc2tog*;
repeat between *’s to corner; [sc, ch1, sc] in corner;
work evenly spaced scs up the side; sc in last corner st;
ch1, join w sl st to first st of round, finish off.

A good rule of thumb for working down the sides is to work 1 sc for each sc2tog row, 2 scs in the side of each dc, 1 sc in the side of each sc and hdc. Err on the side of too many stitches, rather than too few.

Round 2: (WS) Join your border color w sl st in the ch sp of a corner (but not the one where round 1 was joined);
ch2, work Beg Bean in same ch sp, *sk next sc, Bean st in next sc*;
repeat between *’s to next corner;
☨work [Bean st, ch1, Bean st] into the corner ch sp;
repeat between *’s to next corner☨;
repeat between ☨’s to last corner;
work a Bean st in the corner ch sp, ch1; join w sl st in top of beg ch2, turn.

---

As a last step, I ran it through the 10 minute pre-shrink again. I think that actually made it look a tiny bit better. In any case, it’s ready to go. So what do you say folks? Anyone ready to come back from the beach, get dry, and snuggle up?