Knitted from the top down, Penelope is a long shawl with a curved top edge. You can wrap this shawl around your neck and shoulders and be both warm and stylish. Penelope can be knit until you run out of yarn and so this pattern will make best use of a lovely skein of multi-coloured yarn.

Penelope is intended to be made with variegated fingering weight yarn. This shawl can be knitted in any fingering weight yarn that will block well.

The construction is unusual, with lifted increases on both the right and wrong sides. The stitches used are knit, purl, yo, slip and make left and right in both purl and knit.

The shawl is named for Penelope Creed from the Georgette Heyer novel The Corinthian. Penelope escapes from her constrained, stuffy life into a series of adventures full of unsavoury characters, stagecoach escapes and, of course, a handsome hero. This shawl would be a very useful neckerchief for a young lady on the run in a draughty stagecoach.

Thanks to my excellent test knitters Fredchen, orangegiraffe, puffycats, SpinnenGarn and wendylinjohnson.

This pattern has been tech edited by Steph Boardman (http://www.stephboardman.co.uk/technical-editing/).