Midlothian is a top-down triangular shawl featuring three classic, complementary lace patterns. I really enjoy designing—and knitting—lace shawls worked in the heavier yarn weights. All lace is good lace, of course, but something extra special happens to even the simplest of lace patterns when the texture of the decreases is enhanced by the thicker yarn. I enjoy the coziness of having a lap full of warm knitted fabric while I work a DK or worsted weight shawl, particularly on cold, gray winter days. I also love how quickly I can knit up a heavier weight lace shawl, since thicker yarn equals bigger stitches equals fewer rows to the finish line!

With Midlothian, the changing lace patterns will keep you interested as you work your way through this delightful sampler of elegant lace. As a finishing touch, Midlothian is edged with pretty picots, echoing the little dots of the eyelet pattern along the bottom of the shawl. The special centered picot bind off aligns perfectly with both the adjacent lace pattern and the center spine stitch.

Midlothian was designed to be a lovely and relaxing knit for both newer lace knitters as well as more experienced knitters looking for a stress-free project suitable for TV or social knitting.

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

For best results, solid or tonal yarn made of natural fibers is recommended. While dimensions and yardage are provided for DK weight, Midlothian could effectively be worked in other yarn weights. The size is easy to customize; full instructions are provided, including how to calculate stitch counts for any size. Also included are detailed blocking instructions.

YARDAGE: The yardage range is 650-700 yards (594-640 m) when knitted at the pattern size of 21 repeats of Chart 1. This range is determined by averaging test knitter data. For those of you who are looser knitters and have a limited amount of yarn, please be sure to check your gauge ahead of time on a blocked and relaxed garter swatch and adjust your needle size according.

SAMPLE SHAWL INFO: The gold and dark red sample shawls were knitted with Universal Yarn Deluxe Superwash DK in the Spice Rustic (gold) and Pomegranate Heather (dark red) colorways, and used 690 yds (631 m) and 675 yds (617 m) respectively. The purple shawl, which was worked at a larger custom size of 27 repeats of Chart 1, was knitted with The Fibre Co. Arranmore Light in the Corcoran colorway. This is a much lighter DK weight than the Deluxe Superwash DK, so used considerably less yardage at this larger size (about 790 yds/722 m) than would be estimated for heavier DK weight yarns (about 850 yds/772 m) worked at the same size.