You are in your sexiest dress or silky pants and top, heading out for a night out on the town. You could grab one of your beautiful knitted lace shawls to keep the chill away. But you want to boogie tonight and not struggle keeping a shawl on your shoulders. What you need is a lace poncho – ethereal, sophisticated and studded with sparkling beads. Wear it squared or show off the beautiful points. Perfect!

This poncho is square-shaped, lace patterned with the neck opening in the center. It is knit top down from the narrow garter stitch neckline in the round or rather, in the square, as it consists of four conjoined triangles truncated at the beginning to open the neckline. Since it is knit in the round, you will always be knitting from the right side, so all even rows will be knit, unless otherwise indicated.

I knit it in Ebony with tiny crystal-like seed beeds knitted into the pattern using the “crochet hook technigue” of bead placement. Five to six beads are threaded onto a .6mm crochet hook, the hook is inserted into the next stitch, the stitch is removed from the needle and a bead is slipped onto the stitch. The stitch is then returned to the needle so it can be worked according to pattern.

Cast on stitches are joined to make a circle and a lace leaf pattern is worked to form the yoke. A lace lozenge pattern bracketed by zig-zags follows and the poncho is finished with a razor shell lace pattern to form the border. This shawl could be done by any intermediate knitters that have worked with yarnovers, K2Tog, SSK, Double Decreases, and SK2P.