DIY: Knit Madeleine Shawl by Courtney Kelley

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The Madeleine Shawl is a lush triangle shawl with a mesh-like body and an edge of picots. It is designed by Courtney Kelley and published in Classic Knit Shawls by Interweave Press.  I selected this pattern because I was looking for an interesting knit but one that wouldn’t require a complicated pattern and all of my concentration. Sometimes, you just want a straightforward knit that lets you watch your fave TV show.

The Madeleine Shawl pattern was not difficult but I admit that on my first try, I knit all the way past the first half before realizing some of my picots were uneven and the triangular tip was lopsided. I decided to frog it, but found it was rather difficult. The yarn is single ply and it caught on the picots when I was unraveling it. The second knit was a breeze and the resulting shawl was symmetrical and beautiful.

The yarn for this shawl is Debbie Bliss Andes in Pink, a soft and shiny alpaca-silk mix in DK weight. It is a discontinued yarn, but I had 3 skeins in my stash from a Romni Wools Boxing Day sale.

The original pattern called for 250 metres of a worsted weight fibre, however I had 3 skeins of this beautiful DK weight in my stash (which was almost 300 metres). To use the finer weight, I cast on and knit the first skein and then half of the second skein. I weighed the remaining portion of that second skein at just over 50% (to give me some buffer if the tension in the second half was looser). I then worked the tip of the triangle and started the deceasing triangle. It worked out well and allowed me to use the yarn in my stash, rather than buying something new.

Check out the pattern for the Madeleine Shawl in this book by Interweave: