Swallowtail Shawl

Pattern: Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn Clark in Interweave Knits Fall 2006
Yarn: Jaggerspun Zephyr (color Elderberry)
Needles: 3.75 mm

This shawl is fairly small, less than four feet across the top edge. I enjoyed knitting this design very much—it's the second shawl designed by Evelyn Clark that I have made (the other being the Shetland Triangle from Wrap Style, which I knit last fall). Swallowtail is begun from a few stitches at the neck, and the increases are placed so that the shawl grows out diagonally to the left and right to form the triangular shape. There is no separately knitted on sideways border—the stitches are simply bound off along the left and right edges.

There are some p5togs as part of the nupps making up the Estonian lily-of-the-valley lace pattern border. For ease of knitting, I chose to execute these decreases as slip 3 knitwise, purl 2 together, pass slipped stitches over.

Anyone who has this issue of Interweave Knits should also check out editor Pam Allen's note on page 2—she quotes some fascinating notes from Evelyn Clark about why the scallop pattern on the edges of her triangular shawls cannot be created just by using a slightly wavy lace pattern in the final rows. In the Swallowtail Shawl pattern, the number of stitches in the very last row is increased by about 25% and a particularly loose kind of bind off is used to in order to ensure that the scallops develop. Shetland Triangle, which is also scalloped at the edge, is finished off using the same method.