Hike to Marion Falls.

I've been knitting for so long that very few things classify as "hard" in my book...some things are more fiddly than others and from a designer perspective some are much harder to explain, but a lot of people find that the idea alone of knitting "intricate looking" lace is hard!

It doesn't have to be.













A Half Pi shawl is the ideal place for newer lace knitters to dip their toes into the water of lace knitting.  All the shaping takes place outside of the patterning so you are not worrying about increases or decreases having "un-matched" increases or decreases.

This shawl, Hike to Marion Falls, takes the simplicity one small step further and uses only one type of increase, a yarn over, and one type of decrease, a centered double decrease.





The decreases line up through the sections of the shawl, so as on a long hike, you have landmarks to guide you from the top of the trail to the bottom.

The lace pattern in Hike to Marion Falls mimics the play of the rocks and water of a waterfall and is inspired by pictures of waterfalls in Oregon.

Marion Falls, Oregon

As with most shawls, any yarn weight and needles could be used, I opted for a wonderful fingering weight yarn from Valley Yarns, Charlemont.  With the subtle sheen of the silk and the bounce of the merino wool, I love this yarn for shawls!

Creating this pattern was quite the challenge for me!  Limiting myself to that single increase, single decrease and wanting to have landmarks for the knitter (myself to start with) to follow was the biggest challenge, but I think it turned out pretty well!

Obviously, so did the editor for Knotions!  And thanks to her, you can get the pattern free!