Monday 20 June 2011

The Ogee lace shawl

After knitting several shawls, both from Shetland and Estonian, I wanted to design my own shawl. I had found a beautiful pattern that I wanted to knit, called the "Ogee lace" in the book "A treasury of knitting patterns", by Barbara G. Walker.
 
An ogee is a s-shaped curve. This pattern forms soft s-shaped curves with flowers in them. I had to change the pattern somewhat, as the pattern in the book was not symmetrical, something I wanted it to be. It's a very beautiful pattern, but it requires some skills to knit, as the pattern is knitted on both sides.





I love this pattern, and wanted it to form the center of my shawl. I also wanted the borders to have soft forms. For the inner border, I chose a paw-pattern I found in the book "The Haapsalu Shawl. A knitted Lace Tradition from Estonia", by Siiri Reinmann and Aime Edasi. For the outer border, I chose a pattern called "Ocean wave", which I found in the book "Heirloom Knitting" by Sharon Miller.

I have used a lace weight merino yarn from Gossamer, which I found in Sharon Miller's net shop "Heirloom Knitting". The shawl is 110x180 cm and weights 56 grams.

I have written the pattern for the shawl, and it is available for free here. Unfortunately, it is in Norwegian. I will try to translate it later. You can find explanations to the symbols (in English) here. To download the file, go to "File" and "Download original".

7 comments:

  1. You have a good eye! This is well put together :-)

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  2. This is breathtaking!!

    I've got an Aoelean Shawl to finish, my Mystic Forest to finish and then another Aoelean that's been promised to my daughter, but this is going to be next on my list...I only wish the instructions were in English. What size needles did you use?

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  3. Hi

    Thank you. I am sorry that the instructions are in Norwegian only. Maybe I'll get the time to translate them to English one day.

    I used a 3 mm needle to knit this shawl. I do not know what size this is in American needles.

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  4. Well, near as I can figure, 3.25 mm converts to a 3, so I think I'll use that.

    I took some German in school (many, many years ago) and I have relatives in Norway...maybe I can figure it out. I'm guessing here, but you knitted the center portion straight and the edges in the round?

    (I've got 1.5 edging rounds of my Mystic Forest left before I bind off and block and I've knitted up so many Aolean shawls that my daughter's is going to go very quickly...I'm thinking I'll have this started by Thanksgiving. Cross your fingers.)

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  5. Hi

    I found this webpage for transferring European needle sizes to US sizes: http://www.fibergypsy.com/common/needles.shtml. If this is correct, 3mm is US size 2.

    I am afraid that Norwegian and German do differ quit a bit, so I think your relatives and Google translate (http://translate.google.com/#en|no|) will be more helpful.

    Yes, I knitted the centre in a straight line, the inner border is knitted in a circle, and the outer border was joined to the centre in a traditional Shetland way: Starting at a corner, one short side of the edging is cast on invisibly, and the edging is worked flat, joining the live stitches of the shawl, one by one, with the edging rows. The last edging row is grafted to the first for a completely seamless shawl without a single cast-on or cast-off edge.

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  6. hello bente........
    i used google translate to make a rough translation to english of instructions for ogee lace shawl:

    http://oy-vey-gevalt.blogspot.com/2012/06/ogee-shawl-in-norwegian.html

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  7. Hi

    Nice.
    I hope the pattern will be possible to follow.
    Good luck!


    Bente

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