Forest Shantaya is a realm of peace in the forest – a meditation of dappled sunshine, leaves and twigs, pebbles, creeks, bird song, damp earth. The mantra of the repeated centre stitch pattern represents breath and the circle of life.

An update to this pattern has been uploaded -- new bonus charts add the option of making a deeper, triangular shawl (like the red one in the photos).

The Forest Shantaya shawl is knit sideways in one piece. Sideways shawls have the advantage of using up almost all of a luxurious skein or two: weigh your yarn at the outset, and knit until you have used almost half of your yarn. That is the midpoint of your shawl. Now knit the other half with the remaining yarn. I first encountered and fell in love with sideways shawls through the beautiful design work of Åsa Tricosa.

You can use any yarn and any needle size you like. It works best to use a relatively large needle for your yarn so that the lace work blocks out well.

Both charts and written instructions are provided.

The shawl is designed to be modified in length and width and shape. The dimensions provided in the examples are from tip to tip (length) and the widest depth in the centre (width).

For the silk lavender shawl I used 5mm needles and approximately 315 yards to achieve 211 x 28 cm (83” x 11”) dimension. This yarn is labeled lace weight, but it is more like fingering. For the silk robin’s egg blue shawl I used 5mm needles and approximately 265 yards for a slightly shorter shawl (198 x 28 cm; 78 x 11”). I also skipped Chart 4 (which is a straight section without increases or decreases) so that the blue shawl has a more triangular shape with a point at the bottom centre.

The grey-blue alpaca shawl is made with luxurious worsted weight alpaca, using 6 mm needles and a long straight section in the middle. It is 67 x 10” (170 x 25 cm).

The red triangular shawl is made with fingering weight sock yarn, 5mm needles, is 79 x 21” (201 x 53 cm). I used the new triangle charts to create a deep triangle shape by increasing (and then decreasing) on every right side row. These bonus charts and written instructions were added to the pattern on August 20 2012. If you already purchased the pattern before this date, a link to the update was sent to you automatically (PM me if you did not receive it).