11 Oct 2013: The “16” specified very explicitly (twice) as the last row of the border has to be a mistake :-(
There is just no way one can get the illustrated effect if the last row is so much shorter than all the others - I ended up doing 28 chain in order to pull the loops nice and tight, although logically it should possibly be 30. Very much dependent on tension when the loops are so long anyway: I had to re-do a lot of them.

The illustration of the border beginning exactly at the edge of the square doesn’t work in practice, either, because if you have more than one square/triangle joined, then you don’t get the two unused loops between triangles before the next section of border… I had to fudge it.

Not very impressed by this dangly-loop border overall, and I can see why no-one else has used it for this pattern…

I had a little wool left over after finishing the border, and used this to put an extra row of chain loops down the long side of the shawl, doubling back near the ends in order to fill in the holes where the edge of the triangles doesn’t extend out as far as the central rays. This produces a rather thick ‘collar’ where it goes around my neck, and I’m not sure it was altogether a good idea.

Overall, however the wool usage was just about perfect on this pattern. One-third for the full square, another third for the two triangles, and the last third for the border, and about 5% over at the end.

10 Oct 2013: Still working on the loopy border. I’m not convinced - maybe it needs beads strung on it to weight down the loops. Maybe that’s what the mysterious XXX markings (that I’ve interpreted as a mass of slip-stitch) consist of!

Completing my fifth row of loops, now up to 26 chain per loop, and decided to do 3 d.c. instead of 3 sl.st. across the top of the loop in order to raise the top of this XXX section level with the joining loops again. I still don’t know what the pattern actually means here.

7 Oct 2013: Sewed together triangles and square: there is definitely an error. Not only are the triangles a different length, but they only have thirty-two loops per side versus thirty-five on the square… As a result, I had to ‘ease in’ the longer sides to match the short ones instead of matching up the pattern properly. Fortunately I only have the three pieces, so I’m not losing too much of the pattern that is supposed to be created by matching up the corners…

Tried the shawl on. The hole in the middle of the long side (created by the short sides failing to meet) actually works very well as a neck hole and gives the appearance of being intentional - an unexpected bonus!

Fortuitous fit. Since the single square fits more or less exactly across my back, the mesh sections where the sides meet fall neatly on the shoulder-line, and the two triangles meet across the front to form a second complete motif, the whole thing looking very carefully designed.

6 Oct 2013: Completed second triangle - following first triangle rather than pattern, as there seems to have been some kind of error along one side. Possibly this is why both triangles are distinctly shorter than the square :-(

29 Sep 2013: Botched up a triangle, but not very happy with the half-circle edge… The two other completed projects seem to have taken two different approaches to this problem.

Also my triangle actually seems to have come out smaller than the completed square, despite the floppy edge.

28 Sep 2013: Puzzled as to how I create corners when each corner falls between two of the ‘rays’, whereas the half-circle at the centre of the triangle has to have a complete ray on either edge.

24 Sep 2013: Completed one square motif. 35g of wool used, approx 17” on each side. Now I need to work out how to make triangles using this chart… About one-third of wool used - border may have to be in a different colour.

23 Sep 2013: Using a very large hook in an attempt to reproduce the ‘spidery’ effect of the original, though I suspect that there are limited returns beyond a certain hook/wool size ratio and that a couple of millimetres smaller would have made no difference.

This seems to cause problems when I come to work the row which includes making 2 double-trebles down into the chain loop below: getting very large ‘loopy’ stitch between the 2dtr. Eventually solved by switching to a smaller hook to work quadruple trebles (wool round hook 4 times at start of stitch) instead at this point, and working the two stitches together at the top (leave last loop of quad tr. on hook before starting second quad tr., then pull final stitch through last three loops: like tr2tog).

Managed - with some effort - to produce white-on-black and hence printable version of original blurry ‘chart’. The figures just readable on the border section are presumably numbers of chains in the long net: 16,28,26,24,22,20 from outside to in. The things like buttons in the border section appear to be merely the numbers 1 to 6 encircled - row counts? The chart illustrates only six spokes radiating from the central motif, but for a full half-square eight are presumably required (sixteen in complete circle).