About this pattern
This shawl has a classic top-down construction, starting with a garter tab and going outwards with increases along the central ‘spine’ and the sides. It has a very simple yet striking print, that consists of alternating sections of lace and garter stripes in 2 colors. Due to this construction, you can continue going as far as you wish, or your yarn would allow! You can also get creative with your mini-skeins and leftovers to create a multi-colored shawl.
You can choose to finish the shawl with a lace border (as in my samples), or with a garter section.
This print to me felt very classy, especially in my original sample in subdued shades of pink and beige (you can see it in the photo above behind the orange sample, and on the last page), so I named it Retro.
Word ‘baktus’ comes from Norwegian cartoon character (who had nothing to do with knitting, he’s actually a bacteria) and quickly became a general term for traditional Norwegian triangular scarves, worked from a corner. In Russian, however, this term is now used even broader for any triangular shawlette or shawl that the wearer would wrap around the neck with the tip towards the front.

Find many more projects from this pattern on Instagram, by clicking on its Russian tag #бактус_retro
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Size
The pattern is written for a relatively standard shawl size (~65x170 cm / 25x67”), but it’s very easy to adapt the size by adding / skipping repeats, changing your yarn weight or needle size, how hard you block it, etc.

Yarn
You will need a total of ~1000-1200 m / 1100-1300 yds of light fingering to sport-weight yarn (~300-600 m / 330-650 yds per 100 g / 3.5 oz).
You can easily knit this model in even heavier yarn, but then make sure to omit last few sections, unless you want to knit a ‘shlanket’ that you can use to cosy up on a couch, of course.
The content depends purely on the type of shawl you want to get: from linen, cotton, silk, viscose for the summer to wool and alpaca for the winter. Just make sure to combine yarns that behave roughly similarly in blocking.
You will need two contrasting yarns, either in terms of color (looks very striking with a gradient), or texture (or both at the same time!) – as long as they knit up comfortably to the same gauge on the same needles. The pattern is written assuming you are using 2 colors: main (MC) – in both of my samples it’s beige, used for all lace sections (except the border), and contrast (CC) – dark orange / pink in my samples, used for the border; both colors alternated in the garter stripe sections. MC is ~60% of the total yardage and CC – 40%.
My samples were both knit out of classic sock yarn (80% merino, 20% nylon, 400 m / 440 yds per 100 g / 3.5 oz).

Gauge: 24 sts per 10 cm/4” in stockinette after blocking – purely as a reference, no need to match it. Anywhere within 20-25 sts range will give you an average thickness shawl.

Tools
• Main needles: 3-4 mm / US 2.5-6, or size to get a drapey, yet not too holey fabric with selected yarn
• Larger needles: 1 mm / 2-3 US sizes larger than main needles – for the border
• Crochet hook ~5 mm/H, or 1 mm thicker than main needles
• Either a stitch holder pin, or waste yarn
• Stitch markers
• Tapestry needle
• Scissors
• Row counter (optional)

Required skills and Techniques

• Turkish, provisional or classic long-tail cast on
• knitting and purling flat
• basic increases and decreases
• yarn management
• reading charts (optional)
• crochet bind off or elastic bind off of your choice

All difficult steps have photo- and some also video-tutorials (my own explanations / links to non-affiliated technique tutorials).

Pattern tech-edited and translated into English by Olga Barshai GingerHandcrafts