The basic design for this shawl popped into my head when I first saw the batt that would eventually become the handspun yarn for the shawl. The golds demanded to be birch leaves, the greens wanted to be evergreen trees, and the greys called out to be granite outcroppings. Since the shawl is knitted from the top down and I wanted a leaf pattern where the leaves would end up pointing down, I had to play around with various leaf patterns to get the look I wanted.

I also had to modify the Shetland tree of life pattern (Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller, page 222) so it could be knit from the top down. I added an unintended change by being cocky and not double-checking the symbols used in the book: I forgot that she uses both a blank square as well as a square with a dot to indicate a knit stitch. I am used to a dot square representing a purl stitch and I didn’t realize my mistake until I was deep into the trees. I decided I liked the subtle 3-dimensional effect and continued on. You can choose to do the purls in the tree patterns or not.

The shawl is triangular and is knit from the top down with increases on every right-side row, worked at the edges and on each side of the center stitch. It can be made larger by repeating the edging.

I made the shawl with a handspun lace yarn with a gradient but I think it would also be lovely in a solid color. I think it would work well for most lace to light fingering weight yarns.

Warning - the pattern has not been test knitted by anyone other than myself so there may be errors. Please let me know if you find any and I will post a corrected version. Thanks.

02-23-23: Version 2 - Chart 1, Row 41, stitch 14 is a sl1, k2tog, psso instead of a yarn over.

03-23-23: Version 3 - Chart 3, row 129, stitch 56 should be an ssk not a k1.

03-30-23: Version 4 - Fixed row numbers in instructions, no changes made to the charts.

08-09-2023: Version 5 - Clarified (hopefully) the instructions for charts 4 and charts 5. No changes were made to the charts.