from Victorian Lace Today
by Jane Sowerby (Author), Alexis Xenakis (Photographer)
Sandra has this beautiful shawl in her hands during the Saturday afternoon knitting class at our cottage studio. . . . . . . She begins her day at 6 a.m. by knitting this lace to set a positive tone for her day. She is knitting it in 5 balls of Rowan Kidsilk Haze on 4.5 mm needles. Here is how it looks so far. She has worked half way up the centre panel.
The lace knitting patterns in this book are Jane Sowerby’s versions of old patterns. In the mid 1800’s the wealthy travelled to the island of Malta, an island famous for real lace. This shawl’s centre pattern originally appeared as a Maltese stripe consisting of a series of Maltese crosses. It has a centre panel of 77 stitches. A 6 row repeat is worked 88 times, and a knitted-on border is worked onto the completed centre panel.