This beautiful yarn was generously gifted to me as part of an ongoing adventure in designing for handspun yarn. The organic Polwarth fibre was dyed by Inglenook Fibers , then spun and plied by Worldweaver into DK weight yarn. I chose a lace stitch pattern with a small repeat, and a crescent shape so that the stitch pattern would not be broken up by a spine stitch. Three stitches are increased at each end of right-side rows in the body of the shawl, but the border is knit straight, which creates blunt points at the ends of the shawl. If you don’t have handspun, you can, of course, make this shawl with commercial yarn. Choose a bouncy DK weight wool for the closest match to the sample The shape of the shawl and the lace stitch pattern would work well with yarns of different weights and fibres, and I suggest you experiment (i.e., swatch) to find your ideal match between yarn and gauge.

This is an intermediate project. The techniques you will need to know, or learn, in order to complete this shawl are:

• modified tab cast-on (instructions in pattern);
• backwards loop cast-on;
• knit and purl;
• yo increase;
• k2tog decrease;
• ssk decrease;
• cdd double decrease;
• lace bind-off (instructions in pattern.

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