Old Shale Shawl

This is a sea-themed shawl I knit for my mum's 70th birthday (she loved it). Old Shale is a traditional Shetland lace pattern, generally used as an edging. Here I've used it as the all-over stitch pattern but in two colours rather than the traditional one, resulting in a wavy sea-like shawl.

I'd say this is a low intermediate pattern - it's a very straightforward knit with only a few techniques used, but on a large scale, and you'll need to know how to deal with your mistakes if you don't fancy tinking back a thousand stitches to fix them!

1. around 800m fingering weight yarn (I used merino singles to keep my mum warm in the winter - linen would make a nice summery wrap though), in blue and white. I used around 150m white and 650m blue. The white is an undyed skein from Chester Wool, and the blue is a colourway called Summer Lochs by Ripples Crafts
2. 3.25mm circular needles, or a size that gets you the correct gauge/a fabric you're happy with
3. DPNs in the same size
4. stitch markers
5. tapestry needle
6. blocking supplies

If you're confident in your usual gauge you can sneak by and skip this step, but take a moment to decide how large you want your shawl to be. I went monster wrap sized (around 1.8m wide), with a gauge of 24 stitches horizontally per 10cm and 32 vertically (from peak to peak), once blocked.

Cast on 452 stitches (or your preferred stitch count for the shawl size you want: this should be a multiple of 18, +2) in blue using your preferred method. I used the knitted cast on, but if I were to knit it again I'd knot the working ends together from the two blue skeins, and use those to work the continental cast on. For sanity's sake, I always mark every 20 stitches to count to the right number.

Work two rows garter stitch.

On the first row of charting, place a stitch marker between each pattern repeat (after the 19th, 37th etc. stitch). This will help keep you on the straight and narrow.

Follow Charts A and B, alternating semi-randomly to give increasingly sparse stripes of white amongst the blue. Both Charts A and B use the same stitches, but on Chart B rows 3 and 4 are worked in white. I carried the blue up on Chart B and never cut it to change colours, but I cut the white every time I swapped to Chart A (so every time I was knitting more than 2 rows in blue). We'll deal with all those ends later.

Keep knitting!! I worked around 36 repeats (of both A and B added together).

Having ended on row 4 of Chart A, knit one more row in blue, before binding off using your preferred method. I used Jeny's Surprisingly Stretch bind off.

To neaten up the two shorter edges and conceal all the ends, I worked an applied icord edging. Cast on 4 stitches onto one of your DPNs. Begin working an applied icord: every time you reach the final stitch on the needle, pick up a loop using the working thread one stitch in on the main shawl, and ssk these two stitches together. Then push all four stitches back to the other end of the needle and continue.

Hide your ends in the icord as you go, and complete both short sides. Weave any last ends into the icord using your tapestry needle.

I didn't fuss too much about exact sizings when I blocked - I just soaked then pinned it out to the size that best showed off the stitch pattern. Then I let it dry, took some photos, and sent it off to my mum!