One of the most interesting parts of designing the Lantern Walk shawl was how we got to that Lotus lace motif.
Once Ellen (from Mrs Lam Yarns, if you’ve read the previous post you will already know this!) and I decided that the shawl should include a lotus flower in some form, I started to hunt for a stitch pattern I could use. And there were quite a few out there. But none of them were really what I wanted.
And this left me with two options. I could move on to another idea, or I could do the brave thing. Something I had done before, but not on this scale. Designing my own stitch pattern. And since I didn’t want to abandon this part of our idea, I did indeed design my own stitch pattern. Which makes it seem like a quick task, but it isn’t particularly.
It’s one thing to decide what shape you want to make, it’s a whole other thing to get the decreases and the yarn overs to behave in such a way to make the picture you’re trying to “draw”. And then it needed swatching repeatedly to make sure it worked in yarn the way it did in my head. And then to change bits that didn’t work or didn’t look right.
This motif was probably the part of this shawl design that took the most time because so much work and time went into it.
But honestly, I do think it was worth every minute. And now I even have plans for a follow up design that will also use the motif, so watch this space!
