Deco City

My favourite ‘Deco City’ is Napier in New Zealand, which was rebuilt in Art Deco style after a major earthquake in 1931, and is now home to my brother Jeff and his family. The Deco City shawl features a geometric all-over lace pattern in an elegant and easy-to-wear crescent shape.

The lace is simple to knit, with stitch markers taking care of most of the counting, and purled ‘rest’ rows on every wrong-side row. Skills needed include the garter-tab cast-on, simple lace knitting with yarn-overs, k2tog and ssk decreases, the occasional double decrease, and a k2tog-tbl bind-off. Written and charted instructions are both given in full.

If you wish to enlarge the shawl, add an extra repeat of Sections A + B (ending with Section A).

Materials: 2 [3] skeins of The Fibre Company’s Road to China Light (65% baby alpaca, 10% cashmere, 10% camel, 15% silk; 159yds / 145m per 50g skein) in ‘Cobalt’, or 265 [420] yards / 243 [385] metres of sport-weight yarn with good drape.