Warning: This is a long post that goes into a lot of detail about the thought processes and decisions that went into making my latest FO, and a bit of math. If that doesn't interest you, and you just want to see the pretty shawl that was once the Big Pile o Lace, I would advise you to just scroll down to the end where the pictures are. Personally, one of my favourite things about knitting blogs is being able to read about why people choose the patterns they do, and why they make the changes they do – it inspires me. So if you're like me and technical knitting talk doesn't bore you senseless, then read on.

I love knitting shawls. I actually like knitting shawls much more than I like wearing shawls. I like the concept of wearing shawls – especially when I am wearing something sleeveless and I get a bit chilly, either from air conditioning or a cool breeze – but the actual execution of the shawl-wearing seems to be beyond me. I know lots of shawl-wearing women who can pull of any manner of shawl, stole or wrap, but I'm not one of them.

I may have mentioned this before, but I'm not the most graceful of creatures. I'm a bit of a klutz, actually. But I'm okay with that, really I am. I have other endearing qualities. But wearing a shawl well seems to require a bit of grace. Or really big shoulders (and I don't have those either – mine are small, narrow and slightly sloped). The other problem I have wearing shawls is that they usually don't cover my entire arms, and that's the part I usually need covered. I want a shawl that will stay on me, and that will cover my shoulders and arms when I'm wearing something sleeveless and I get chilly.

Enter those ingenious designers of the Faroe Islands. The first thing you read about Faroese shawls is that they're designed to stay on.  I figured that alone made it worth a try. Just before my trip I decided that I would make a Faroese shawl in off-white Misti Alpaca laceweight. I bought 3 skeins, and figured that would be enough for a generously-sized shawl. Then I started looking for a pattern. I found construction guidelines here, but since I had never made one, I wanted an actual written out pattern. Some google searching led me to some patterns by Heartstrings, Lucy Neatby and Sivia Harding, but none of these would enable me to download a .pdf, but instead I would need to wait for the pattern to be sent by mail, and I only had a few days before I travelled. Plus, none of them really spoke to me. I mentioned to Betseydoodle that I wanted to make a Faroese shawl, and she told me that she had a stack of old Knitter's magazines, and she recalled seeing some patterns there. So I borrowed her magazines, and there in the Fall '97 issue was this pattern by Marilyn van Keppel:

I really liked the simplicity of it. I preferred it to some of the others I had looked at with an all over pattern – this just seemed more elegant somehow. Two things worried me. First, it is knit from the bottom up (which is traditional), instead of the top down like some of the others (which I preferred because it didn't require casting on a gazillion stitches). I found a top-down pattern in another issue, so I thought I could follow the construction of that one, with the design of this one. The other issue was the sheer amount of garter stitch. Simplicity is one thing – miles of mind-numbing garter stitch is something all together different. But what if I carried the border pattern up the back panel? I would still have the simple look I liked, but each row would have some lacy bits in the middle to keep my mind from turning to mush.

So I packed the yarn and and a photocopy of the patterns and headed off on my trip. It wasn't until the last day of my trip that I pulled it out. My brain was tired, and deconstructing the top pattern seemed like more work than I wanted to do, so I opted to do it bottom up and start with a gazillion cast on stitches. I quickly realized that the laceweight used in the pattern is thicker than the laceweight I had. For one thing, the pattern yarn is 450m in a 100g ball. Mine is 400m in a 50g ball. I swatched in garter stitch with a few different needles sizes, and decided on a 4mm needle, which gave me a light, airy, lacy garter stitch fabric, without being too sloppy. I washed and blocked my swatch, and measured it. I got 16 sts to 4 inches – the pattern gauge is 14 sts to 4 inches. The pattern said to cast on 431 stitches, and the border pattern has a 30 stitch repeat. Multiplying 431 x 16/14 = 492. So I figured if I added one 30-stitch repeat on each side of the centre panel, I would start with 491 and that would be just about perfect. I did wonder briefly how I would incorporate my numbers into the shoulder shaping, but I figured I'd work that out later. Some knitters work out all of the math before they start – others make it up as they go along. I'm definitely in the latter camp.

Casting on 491 stitches sucks. A lot. In case you were wondering. It takes a long time. And I seem to be counting-challenged, even with putting markers at regular intervals to help with the counting. But eventually, I had all of the stitches on the needle, and I was off.

After 6 rows of garter stitch, and 8 rows of garter stitch decreasing 4 stitches on every right-side row (outside edges, and just outside the centre panel), I was ready to start the lace pattern, and was convinced that my initial idea of carrying the lace up the back was a good idea, as that much garter stitch was a recipe for insanity.

(Just a little tip here – when you're doing a garter-based pattern that is completely reversible, it can sometimes be a challenge to know when you're on the right side (and thus need to do your decreases), and when you're on the wrong side. I used stitch markers at the 4 decrease points – 3 identical ones and one that was completely different. The different one was at the beginning of my right-side rows, so I could easily tell if I was knitting a right-side or a wrong-side row) 

I must admit that I began the lace section with just a wee bit of trepidation.  After all, I had 459 stitches of laceweight on the needles and screwing up the pattern would not be pleasant. But I know that I'm experienced enough at lace to be able to read my knitting and know what each row should look like based on the chart. I took the first row very slowly and carefully, and added stitch markers at every repeat, so I could do regular stitch counts and make sure I was on track (of course, these stitch markers were different from those I used to mark the decrease points – here I just used knotted loops of contrasting yarn) I made it through without having to rip anything out (whew!)

When it came to figuring out the math for the shoulder shaping, I got lazy. Yes, I could have figured out at what percent of the overall stitches came the decrease rows, and then recalculated according to my gauge, but, well, I didn't. I figured that, given my pear shape, I needed a wider bottom and smaller top anyway and therefore I should be decreasing later anyway. So although I started with more stitches, and decreased at the same rate (4  stitches per row), I did the decrease rows for shoulder shaping at exactly the same points as in the pattern. I crossed my fingers and hoped that I wouldn't end up with a misshapen mess.

I couldn't get away with no math at all though. The centre panel tapers slowly towards the top. Since I had continued the lace pattern, I couldn't do that. So after I had done as many repeats of the centre lace pattern as I figured I could squeeze in, I had to decrease from 35 stitches down to 20 and then to 0 in way fewer rows than in the pattern. As I got to that point, I wrote out the decrease sequence in the pattern in order to alter it logically, when I realized something didn't make sense. The pattern ends with "Continue decreases until there are 12 sts total" But given the decrease pattern already established, it is impossible to get to 12 stitches. Before spending too much effort figuring out how to do it, I checked on line for pattern errata. Sure enough, there was an entire paragraph missing from the instructions. Thus armed, I set out to calculate my decreases so that I would end up at the same point as the pattern. I had one little glitch (wherein I assumed that there was a mistake in the pattern, when in fact it was correct. I had failed to realize that moving markers will change your stitch count before and after the markers (duh), but since there weren't many stitches on the needles at this point, it didn't take me too long to redo the few rows I had to rip out).

So yesterday I set out to block it. Now, knitting lace always takes a leap of faith – you can't really get a good idea of what it looks like until it is blocked. And for something with as many stitches as this, it's a big leap of faith! Would it look like I want it to? Would it be properly shaped, or would I be the one person with a Faroese shawl that doesn't stay on. Would it cover my arms like I want it to?

Here's a picture spread out on my bed pre-blocking (sorry for the wonky camera angles, it was the only way I could get the whole thing in)

After a little soak, a few blocking wires (oh, my, I love my blocking wires – best knitting investment I ever made (okay, along with the swift and ball winder, oh, and the Options needles!) and a few pins, I had this: 

Frequently throughout the day I popped my head in to look at it. Finally, at bedtime I unpinned it and tried it on (note: the picture really doesn't do it justice – it fits great, and is really very pretty)

Thank you, knitters of the Faroe Islands, for coming up with such an ingenious design. I love it. I will definitely make another like this, maybe in a heavier yarn (fingering weight, perhaps). This is so light and delicate – it makes me want to buy a sexy, sleeveless dress and go somewhere fancy just so I can wear this shawl with it! Meanwhile, I'm happy wearing it with whatever I happen to have on!