The Miss Woodhouse Shawl is a “more than a triangle” shawl -- extra increases on the outer edges make it grow faster in width than in length.

The unblocked shawl measures 50” across the top and 16” down the center back. Blocked it measures 66” across and 25” down the center back. These measurements are approximate because they depend on how severely you block your piece.

This pattern is good for a beginner knitter who wants to knit lace. The pattern is written in great detail and spells out everything you need to know. The lace is charted in 4 relatively simple charts that are easy to follow.

It is knit from fingering rather than laceweight yarn, which is much easier for a lace newbie to execute. The stitches used are knit and purl, and a few simple lace techniques – yarnover, knit 2 together, and ssk, and sl1 k2tog, psso (which are explained in the pattern).

Re-sizing

You can enlarge the shawl by doing more repeats of Chart B – as many as you like. With each extra repeat you do, you will be doing more repeats of the 4-stitch pattern repeat. Well, you’ll see – it’s obvious from the pattern.

Another alternative is to use a heavier yarn and larger needles – like a dk weight and perhaps size 8 or 9 needles. You could do this in conjunction with extra chart repeats if you like.

Conversely, you could make it smaller with fewer repeats of Chart B. For example, if you were making it for a small child.

And speaking of doing it in different weights of yarn – you could use laceweight yarn. I’d advise doing a small swatch of the pattern stitches to make sure you are happy with how open it is – you may want to size the needles down as well. And if you are knitting it at a smaller gauge, you’d want to add some repeats as described above.

And this of course would affect the amount of yarn you need.