FO: Prairie Rose Lace Shawl

Pattern: Prairie Rose Lace Shawl by Evelyn A. Clark, available in The Knitter’s Book of Wool or The Knitter, Issue 16
Yarn: JaggerSpun Zephyr Wool-Silk 2/18, approximately 35 to 40g in colour: Aegean Blue
Needles: 2.5mm KnitPicks circs

It took me a long time to choose a pattern to knit for the Ravelry International Shawl Exchange. Having so many books of shawl patterns didn’t exactly help me narrow down my options and I did start and stop a couple of times with different designs that I couldn’t get into.

I did wonder at one point whether I’d ever find a pattern to knit and had visions of me knitting at midnight in an attempt to finish before the deadline Fortunately the wonderful Evelyn Clark came to my rescue again with another of her addictive patterns.

The first shawl I ever knitted (of which I don’t think there are any photos – will have to check) was her Flower Basket Shawl. That got me addicted to interested in top-down triangular shawls and they’re pretty much my go-to shawl style now whenever there is lace needed to be knit.

The Prairie Rose Lace Shawl has a slightly more involved pattern repeat which was just what I needed. Nothing complicated happening, but each row was a bit different and I never really memorised the pattern so it kept my interest.

I ended up knitting six pattern repeats. The pattern itself says four, but this makes for a much smaller shawl and I wanted to make something a bit bigger than a scarf. Because my shawl now has to travel to Australia, I decided not to carry on and knit more repeats and delay its arrival even more.

The only modification I did other than the extra repeats was to adjust the edging. The original pattern has a row of the leaves before the edging. I omitted this so that the edging is directly after a row of flowers. I personally prefer this as I think it matches the rest of the shawl’s pattern of leaves – flowers – leaves – flowers.

The yarn was delicious to knit with and blocks beautifully. It’s been in my stash for a long time waiting to be used and I think this pattern does it justice. I hope my swap partner agrees.