My first ever published pattern appeared in Knitty, so I thought it would be fun to design a mashup of some of my favorite shawls along the way since then! The tencel lace-weight from Trailhead reminded me of butterflies every time I looked at it, and that gave me the name (leptira means “butterfly” in Croatian) and the stitch motifs. The inner mesh portion is shaped using short rows to build a crescent from the top, and then the leaf motif grows organically, with all of the increases written into the motif so that they flow outward. The edging is flowery and lovely, and even though it may look like a difficult motif, it’s actually created rather simply by drastically increasing the number of stitches and then stretching and pinning during blocking.

If you’ve never knit lace before, I have a couple of tips! First, knit a little on the loose side to be able to manipulate your stitches more easily. Second, lace never realizes its complete beauty until it’s been wet blocked and pinned. Before that, it can look like a shriveled-up shower cap! If you want to remind yourself of the blocking magic that will happen, definitely swatch, wet the swatch, and then stretch and pin it out. Then you can remind yourself that the blocking magic will indeed happen for you.

Helpful videos are here.
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