Perfect summer knit: Fern Fronds shawl
Here in Finland it feels like summer is almost here. And it’s got me thinking about my favourite summer knits.
Summer and rectangle lace shawls go hand in hand. They’re so wonderfully light and versatile to wear.
You can wear them casually over your shoulders with a top and jeans, or with your favourite summer dress. And you can wrap them around your neck on a chilly morning.
Fern Fronds is a rectangular lace shawl knitted on the bias.
This construction creates a fun parallelogram shape and gives the shawl a wonderful drape. The diagonally moving lace and garter stitch sections add a nice, dynamic look. The length is very easy to adjust to suit your own needs, and the pattern also includes instructions on how to modify the width.
And just in time for summer, I’ve updated the pattern for you.
It now includes optional charted instructions for the lace for those who like using charts. But don’t worry, complete written instructions are still included, as always.
This time the chart turned out to be a bit problematic.
The lace pattern in Fern Fronds uses both ssk and sl1k1psso. Both are left-slanting one stitch decreases, and they have the same symbol in the charting program. So a new custom symbol was needed!
With my tech editor Pauliina, we put our pretty heads together.
We needed to come up with possible solutions for sl1k1psso. Should we go with a symbol that is similar to sl2k1psso? Or something that is similar to ssk? We felt it needed to be something that wouldn’t have an obvious other meaning, because that would be misleading. It also shouldn’t look like a two stitch decrease, or a right-slanting decrease.
The most obvious and simple option usually works best.
So in the end we modified the ssk symbol by adding a star. We thought this is the least confusing choice, but enough to make the knitter pause and look at the key. But if you do accidentally breeze through the chart without checking the key and work ssk instead of sl1k1psso, no harm done. The pattern will still work and no one will even notice the difference!
Check your inbox if you’ve already purchased Fern Fronds.
You have received an email with a link to download the updated pattern. You can also access the new file from your Ravelry library.
If you don’t have Fern Fronds yet, show your pattern library some love and get it here. Happy knitting!
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