Knitting -- Vintage reproduction

Some day I'll be good enough at knitting lace to do this.  It's a modern reproduction of a Victorian Shetland shawl on display at a museum.  Gorgeous to the point of tears!

The pattern is FREE from Ravelry whose members combined to create the reproduction.

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-queen-susan-shawl

I wanted it because of the traditional motifs it uses.

I've been collecting Shetland motifs. I started with Elizabeth Lovick's paper, free online.
http://www.knittingbeyondthehebrides.org/lace/SameButDifferent.pdf

She has swatch photos and diagrams but no stitch counts or row numbering. According to reviews on Amazon, this is also true of some parts of her books. With the free paper, I went through and transcribed the counts for the Shetland versions of the motifs.

These are shared motifs among the traditions; the paper does not document all the Shetland motifs  there are, and that's why I was googling around leading to the Ravelry pattern. 

Then there are Frances Lambert's famous Twelve Patterns for Shetland Shawls. You may be able to see them here (Hathi Trust has a lot of books only viewable in the US).
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433006773919;view=1up;seq=388

I dug out my ancient Step by Step Book of Needlecraft, which first taught me to crochet and knit and has the original of my (slightly redesigned) pullover pattern. Published by Bantam, it is still available online.  I remembered that it had a Shetland shawl (page 100) and now I know that the center is worked in the traditional Ocean Wave motif, which I transcribed.

I had done about 3 repetitions and it was not working out, so I re-checked my transcript against the book and sure enough, I had a mistake. So I fixed it, printed a fresh copy, and unraveled everything to start over.  I worked it in leftover worsted weight yarn on size 9 straight needles. The only trick for this particular example is that you cast on 96 stitches, and the first row has a bunch of k3tog which reduce the stitch count to 88 which carries on through the rest of the knitting. Knitting it all by itself, I only cast on 88 stitches plus 5 on each side for an edge pattern.

Pinterest has lots of pages on knitted lace patterns from all traditions, many of them free.

If you're having trouble with symbols, try this page.
http://www.craftyarncouncil.com/chart_knit.html

And finally, if you have already worked some traditional lace and want THE reference book for it, this is recommended in Ravelry's writeup for the Queen Susan shawl pattern:
Miller, Sharon. Heirloom Knitting

It's about 300 pages of information for at least $150 with 37 5-star reviews. It's out of my price range and I'm not ready to use it yet but maybe you are.

If I have managed to get you all worked up about Shetland lace, now you have a number of resources to make your own!

Oh, just one more!

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights  Reserved