He’s the mystery, the drama, the trickster, he’s innuendo and beauty; with worsted-weight wool and lace-knitting he is the illusion of fragility, of intricacy, and with necklace of pearls about the neck, just a whee bit slutty (there’s no slut-shaming in this house!).

Mischief Pearl is a triangular lace-knit bandana or shawlette, finished with a structured crochet bind-off that includes pearl beads to weigh down the fringe and create a slender shape when worn on the face or around the neck. Mischief is based on an Estonian lace-knitting pattern with some special techniques and charts, so even veteran lace-knitters might learn a few new things, but if you’re a new knitter and you can knit and purl, you can knit yourself some mischief.

A few things we’re gonna learn along the way:

• Estonian lace charts and symbols
• Nupps! Nupps.
• Garter-tab cast-on for triangular shawls
• Basic triangular shawl construction using charts
• Looped crochet bind-off with beads Beads! They can be tricky.

Sizing & Materials

Size: Example shown measures approx. 32” long by 13” wide.

Gauge: around 16st/20 cm in stockinette but not very relevant!

Yarn: shown in worsted weight, Dragon Strings Fairy Wrap - Aurora Borealis. Worsted or DK will work, 50g more than enough / 100m

Needles: US 8-10 depending on your yarn weight. Example shown used US 10. DK weight yarn does very well on US 8 / 5mm needles. Note: You might favour a needle designed for “lace” with a longer taper and pointy tip, which can make nupps easier to execute.

Other notions: stitch markers, crochet hook of similar size to needles, a much smaller crochet hook that fits through the hole in your beads, tapestry needle, pins and mats for wet blocking, and beads! BEADS. You’ll need 39 beads.

Notes on beads: Mischief uses a fairly large bead, 6-10mm, with ideally a 1mm hole so you can thread worsted weight yarn through. The weight of the beads is what adds shaping to the bandana when it’s worn, so don’t worry if your beads are a little heavy - that’s the whole point!