I remade the same shawl in another yarn and took the chance to write up in more detail what I’d done. You can see it here

The yarn is a lovely, almost-solid red and a dream to work with (except for beading). It has good definition and a lovely shine.

I’d already made one Mokara and knew it was an excellent pattern but I wanted something a bit less open this time.

The basic shape of the shawl is Mokara, but I put 2ch instead of 4ch either side of each spine and at the edges. This meant I needed to make a few changes to some of the early rows of the shawl.

I was making it up as I went along, intending to finish with the flowers from the pattern Tea Flower. It would have meant using different colours because I wouldn’t have had enough yarn and it wasn’t until almost the end that I opted not to do that.

At first I was just adding filet rows but I got bored and decided to add in some butterflies. The butterflies are 7 stitches across and I put 5 stitches between them, so the row repeat was a multiple of 12, plus however many end stitches I needed. The number of end stitches in each segment increased by two every row (following the pattern established by Mokara) and I needed to make sure that when I got to the second row of butterflies each time that I would have space to fit them in. The first butterfly panel was mostly luck; the second panel took a bit of maths!

Then the first row of arches was an interesting challenge to fit onto the butterfly section. It’s the same stitch pattern as Mokara but carried right across the whole shawl. I continued to increase one stitch each end of each segment, but I changed the spine to a single stitch to fit in with the rest of the border. This meant I added one extra stitch per spine in that row only.

Sounds confusing? It was!

Once I’d established the arches pattern it was straightforward, and I was lucky that when I started getting low on wool and began the Mokara edging I ended up with a number of dc stitches that worked perfectly with the final two edging rows. (The repeat is 10 + 1).

I beaded the final row according to the Mokara pattern; the instructions are very clear and the chart is clear and helpful. It’s a bit time-consuming but it does add a bit of glamour to the shawl!

I’m happy with the final result. It’s not as light and elegant as my other Mokara but it’s a nice, medium-weight shawl that I can enjoy wearing.