Crescent Swallowtail Shawl

I finished the Swallowtail Shawl and got it blocked yesterday.

The bendable blocking wires were perfect for the round shapes.

Modifications: I added an extra repeat of the budding lace chart for a total of 9. This made it deeper by a couple more inches. There is an option to do that section in stocking stitch as well.

The pattern also has the knitter go up a needle size somewhere in this section. I didn't. It also has the knitter going up a needle size in Chart B on and again in Chart C. I only went up a needle size once, when I was starting Chart C.

I also did a picot bindoff by casting on 2 stitches and binding off 5, making sure there are picots on the points of the 'swallowtail'. On my first try, I got 2/3 of the way across the bindoff when I realized I hadn't paid attention to where the picots got placed. I tinked all the way back to the beginning of the bindoff and when re-commencing the picots, I made sure the swallowtail tips had a picot. This also makes it very easy to run the blocking wire through the picot creating nice 'swallowtails'.

I not only like this pattern because it is a crescent shawl, but it also allows incremental increases. The original pattern only allows 14 or 19 repeats of the budding lace to align with the Lily of the Valley pattern. Adding one, two or more repeats gives the knitter much more flexibility and the ability to make maximum use of the yarn. In this case, luck was with me as I only had 5 metres of yarn left over after the bindoff.

I do recommend running (and leaving in) a lifeline after the 8th repeat of the Budding Lace pattern if you are going to do extra repeats as it will make it much easier to frog back to that point if you find you're running short of yarn in Chart C.

Another thing I like about this pattern is the L O N G garter stitch tab (34 rows/17 ridges) used to start the shawl. This avoids the strange peak that often occurs in crescent shawls.

 The rambouillet yarn that I used was luscious. I hope I can find another source for this yarn. I'm also very pleased with how the tonal dyeing worked, providing different shades of this golden yellow dye. There will be more yarn dyeing in my future...