The shawl is worked from the bottom up…..so, you will start by casting on stitches for the entire shawl. The bad news – you have to cast on 439 stitches to begin. The good news – after the edging, the stitches decrease fairly rapidly so that as the excitement of working on a new project decreases, so do the number of stitches (at the rate of 4 stitches every other row). More good news – you will be working the bottom border and side edges (which actually become the top edge when the shawl is completed) along with the body of the shawl. So, when you complete the final row of knitting, the only thing left to do (in addition to blocking it, of course) is to graft (or 3-needle bind off) the remaining 24 stitches. Beads are used as an accent on this shawl – they are on the bottom border, center pattern, and top portions of the design.