Estonian shawl

I was very taken with Miranda's Triangular Shawl from Knitting Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush. But I don't much like triangular shawls. I prefer square ones. Also the shawl was too small for what I wanted to make. And it was knitted in the traditional Estonian way of casting on and knitting from the edging upwards. I prefer to knit on edgings afterwards, (I just prefer the way they look when done that way.) And, where possible, I prefer to knit from the centre outwards, it is easier to know how large the shawl will be when finished.

This sounds like a lot of changes, but it really is not difficult to alter a pattern.

To start with, I looked at the charts carefully to see if any elements would cause problems if worked upside down. In this case I couldn't see any lurking difficulties.

I began with a normal centre for a square, working the centre stitch pattern as shown in the book, but increasing for the square instead of decreasing. This stitch is very easy to work this way. I went on until I had my desired size of centre.

The narrow band between sections was no problem. I just counted my stitches in each section and positioned the pattern accordingly.

 With the diamond section I marked the centre of each of my sections and then marked the pattern repeats outwards from the centre. Again that gave me my pattern position.

Having worked another narrow band I was still short of my ideal size, so I looked at the edging pattern and came to the conclusion that most of the edge shaping came from blocking rather than the pattern itself. So I knitted the edging. I do actually find that the pattern does impart a slight wave to the outer edge, but it doesn't show enough to matter in wear.

I worked another narrow band and then knitted on a simple edging all round.

I blocked my shawl and it is the one I probably throw on most often when I'm a bit chilly. I particularly like the textured centre stitch pattern.

For anyone who hasn't yet got hold of Nancy Bush's book, I can thoroughly recomend it. There are lots of varied patterns with lovely clear charts. I have several more patterns in it that I am eyeing with an eye to the future!