Hardenburgia Shawl

I’ve been putting off this post for so long. I think I was just so over this project I no longer wanted to talk about it again. So… here goes. The Hardenburgia Shawl. This is a free pattern available on Ravelry (here). My grandma received and loves it, so I’m glad I did push through and get this finished in time for her birthday. This was actually my first FO of the year!

Hardenburgia Shawl

Shawl Center

Pattern: Hardenburgia Shawl (My Ravelry project page.)
Started: December 20, 2009
Completed: January 8, 2010
Yarn: Aslan Trends Invernal, 2 skeins
Needles: US 8 Addi Lace circular
Notes: Warning! These notes are VERY long. The longest I’ve ever had for any project. The pattern is written okay. There’s no written instructions for the charts. Normally this isn’t a problem as I have no problems working from only charts, but the edge chart was so very wrong that I was wishing there WERE written instructions. Thankfully, because of Ravelry, I found someone else who’d knit this shawl and ran into the same problem with the edge chart and wrote out the instructions.

This shawl should DEFINITELY be started with a provisional cast on. If you do start this with a long tail cast on, it can be picked out so you get live stitches on the edge where the border should be knit, but it’s definitely more of a pain to do. A knitted on border has to be worked with live stitches. I imagine you could make it work on the cast on edge, however I don’t think it would lay as nice or flat this way and it doesn’t follow the instructions of a “knitted on border” that the pattern states to work for the edging.

The chart for the border is definitely wrong. It doesn’t take into account the adding and decreasing of stitches at all. Further, if you follow the chart, all the wrong side rows should be knit (based on photos the ws rows should be purled, but I haven’t seen this mentioned in the pattern for the border), which would make purls on the front, which would make the pattern not turn out as picture at all and then there’s those two rows that say purl. Not sure what that’s all about (especially since the chart doesn’t indicate “knit on rs, purl on ws” or anything like that). There’s also the border stitches (along the edge of where the border is knitted on to the live stitches) that are worked in garter (as the pictures of the finished shawl show) that aren’t mentioned at all. I also think that there should be some ssk’s in places there are k2togs and instead of the “slip 1, k2tog, psso” I think it should be just a k3. Well, where I’ve made changes, I think it makes the whole thing flow better, even if it is wrong (which I’m pretty sure it is based on the pictures of the original, but I’m happier with it this way). Here’s my written instructions for the wave border:

1. (WS) k2, p9, k1, knit last stitch together with border stitch
2. (RS) sl1, k3, yo, k5, yo, ssk, yo, k2 (15 sts)
3. k2, p11, k1, knit last stitch together with border stitch
4. sl1, k4, k3tog, k2, yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k1 (13 sts)
5. k2, p9, k1, knit last stitch together with border stitch
6. sl1, k3, k2tog, k2, yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k1 (12 sts)
7. k2, p8, k1, knit last stitch together with border stitch
8. sl1, k2, k2tog, k2, yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k1 (11 sts)
9. k2, p7, k1, knit last stitch together with border stitch
10. sl1, k1, k2tog, k2, yo, k2tog, yo, k2tog, k1 (10 sts)
11. k2, p6, k1, knit last stitch together with border stitch
12. sl1, k2tog, k2, yo, k1, yo, ssk, yo, k2 (11 sts)
13. k2, k7, k1, knit last stitch together with border stitch
14. sl1, k3, yo, k3, yo, ssk, yo, k2 (13 sts)

Here’s a close up of the border so you can see how it looks:

Shawl Edging

When I finished this shawl, I had about 2 yards left. If I had more yarn, I probably would have made sure to end each piece with a wrong side row instead of a right side row, so that when it was grafted together it wouldn’t be so obvious that they didn’t line up perfectly. I used kitchener stitch to get the two pieces together.

If I were to do this shawl again (very unlikely), I would add 3 garter stitch border stitches to each side of the main piece. It doesn’t curl a bunch, but enough that it kinda bothered me. If not a garter stitch border, then I’d add an extra stitch on each side that gets slipped at the beginning of every row to create an edging that lays better.

Next time I’ll update on all my current WIPs. 🙂 Have a good weekend everyone!