The Romance Shawl

This is a pattern by Dorothy Siemens of Fiddlesticks Knitting entitled The Romance Shawl.

Her pattern is for a triangular shawl, but as I prefer square shawls I made it square. This is very easy with any shawl that starts with a small number of stitches and increases to form the triangle. In this case the design is basically two triangles forming a larger triangle. If you work four triangles you get a square.

All you have to do is identify the outside edge stitches and omit them. Instead you take the part between the original two triangles,  in this case, where the double row of  yarn overs form a line,  and work it four times.

 The other point is that the original triangle was worked back and forth, but the square is worked in the round. This means that every round is now a right side round. In this case the shawl is on a stocking stitch background so the instructions tell you to knit alternate, ie. wrong side rows, in purl. But for a square there are no wrong side rows, so the odd-numbered rows need to be knitted. 

This pattern has an interesting double border, so that the red border and the blue border, which in the photograph look like merely a change of colour, are actually two separate borders knitted one on top of the other.

I was really attracted by this idea but this was the shawl that made me decide that I prefer borders knitted on at right angles. This is merely a matter of preference, I just happen to prefer the way they look.

I must say how much I appreciate the large print of  Fiddlesticks Knitting patterns and the large clear charts.

 I am partially sighted so am very aware of these things and would say that this company and Heirloom Knitting are both very good in this respect. In the case of other companies I am often put off because I would need to get the charts enlarged before I could start knitting, and being housebound these days that means asking someone to do it for me.