Katania is a whimsical lace shawl featuring pretty eyelet motifs and lace edgings. The slightly asymmetrical triangular shaping begins with just a few stitches which then flow into sections of snowflake eyelets and Shetland tree motifs interspersed between mesh lace bands. A lacy sawtooth edging, which adds an extra bit of fancy to the design, is knitted at the same time as the rest of the shawl, which is finished with an eyelet and picot bind off combination.

Ever since I began knitting lace, I was always drawn to the smallest motifs in lace knitting—the eyelet patterns. Just a cluster of a few yarn overs and decreases, it is amazing how many different ones there are. I’ve used them a lot in my designing, as I find the resulting fabric absolutely charming. And since eyelets are often worked on a field of stockinette, they tend to show off the organic beauty of the tonal hand-dyed yarns that so many of us love to use for lace knitting. For Katania, which is a Hebrew name meaning small, I decided to go eyelet-crazy and use one of my favorites—the snowflake eyelet—as the focal point. I added the smallest version of cute Shetland trees to complement the snowflakes.

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

While dimensions and yardage are provided for fingering weight, Katania could effectively be worked in other yarn weights. Directions for a larger fingering-weight shawl are included--which would add 12” to the wingspan measurement and use between 840-940 yards (768-860 m)-- or you may use heavier yarn worked at the pattern-size instructions to yield a larger size. Also included are detailed blocking instructions.

SIZE AND YARDAGE: My gold sample shawl pictured used about 630 yards (576 m) and measures 65 x 29” (165 x 74 cm) relaxed after blocking. Test knitted shawls worked in fingering weight used between 630-700 yards (576-640 m).