Holbrook is a top-down, semi-circular shawl with a beautiful, wide knitted-on lace border. I just love the look of knitted-on borders—they add a touch of elegance and drama that is very intriguing. This border has lace patterning on both sides, but is easy to memorize and fun to knit.

This is an excellent pattern for those of you new to knitted-on borders or knitted lace with patterning on both sides. The pattern includes clear instructions on how to work a knitted-on border and detailed blocking notes. I think you may find that Holbrook is a lot easier to knit than it looks!

The Holbrook pattern includes both charts and full written out instructions for those of you who prefer not to use charts.

The shawl body consists of three triangles: a larger triangle in the middle section composed of a lovely old lace pattern known as English Mesh Lace and side triangles that are knitted in classic stockinette for a stunning design contrast. As you wrap Holbrook around your shoulders, the stockinette stitching peeps through the lace sections, providing visual interest no matter how the shawl is worn.

Holbrook is shown in fingering weight but the design is also suitable for lace weight. A solid or tonal yarn is highly recommended to showcase the intricacy of the border design. Holbrook is easy to make larger or smaller by adding repeats of a 6-row chart.

Construction Notes: Holbrook starts at the center back of the neck and is knit down to the bottom edge. A knitted-on border is attached at right angles to the body.

Yardage: I used about 650 yards (594 m) of fingering weight yarn for the blue sample pictured. Some test knitters that used up to 700 yards (640 m). For those of you wishing to make a shawl larger than the pattern size, if using two average-sized skeins--400-450 yards (366-412 m)--of fingering weight yarn, you could probably increase the size up to about 70” (178 cm) across the top by working 2-3 extra repeats of Body Chart 2--but this would really depend on your yarn, gauge and needle size.

Test knitters who used lace weight achieved a similar size using 630-700 yards (576-640 m) of lace weight on smaller needles and knitting 3-6 more repeats of the Body Chart 2.

ERRATA: On page 11 of the Written Instructions, the bracketed 6-stitch pattern repeats on Rows 5 and 7 of Body Chart 2 are missing the yellow shading that is referenced in the italicized notes for that chart. The stitches are all correct as written.