We’re chugging along on our Greenwood Shawls! If you’re keeping pace with us, you’ve already done the picot cast-on, one repeat of the leaf lace pattern, one row of bobbles, and have probably worked the first repeat of the pattern. So what now?
Well… you just keep doing that! The pattern starts over at Row 9, and you start working the leaf lace pattern over again. From here on out, you’ll need to incorporate decreases at rows 11, 5, 19, and 23, working them in pattern (meaning work a SSP decrease). Because the stitch counts will switch back and forth between even and odd numbers—the first time you work row 51, for example, you start with 132 stitches, but the second time you work row 51, you’ll start with 115 stitches—you’ll have to use your judgment about some of the stitches.
On subsequent leaf lace rows, if you don’t have enough room to create a full leaf pattern (say you finish starting a leaf and have 7 stitches remaining before the edge stitch), just work those last few stitches in reverse stockinette stitch. You could technically start another leaf, but remember that you’ll be decreasing four stitches in that section (over the course of the rows needed to knit the full leaf repeat)—you don’t have to have half of a leaf, so working a few extra purl stitches is the best option there.
Another place that some knitters have had trouble is on row 51, as I mentioned. The pattern includes a note in parentheses for this row: if 2 sts remain, SSK, if 3 sts remain, SSK, k1. This note is there because, as I said earlier, the stitch counts swap between even and odd numbers. The first time you work row 51, you can just work the SSK. But the second time, you’ll need to work the SSK, k1. To make sure you’re on the right track, you can revisit the stitch counts by row for the first two repeats that I posted in the second blog post.
How’s your Greenwood Shawl coming along? If you have any questions about anything, be sure to ask them here or stop by our Ravelry group so we can be sure to help you along the way.