I love this shawl, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a beginner. The charts don’t match up to the stitch count, and you have to work out your own repeats, especially for the last chart. This affects the outcome sometimes, I wasn’t sure whether I should be doing a honeycomb/zigzag pattern yarn over and decrease repeat, or a diagonal stripe stitch pattern.

The random holes pattern is a problem if you accidentally forget to do a yarn over or a decrease, and it is not noticeable in the following row, as it would be in a regular stich pattern, so the stitch count can very quickly get out of hand! If you do this pattern I recommend putting in stitch markers at regular intervals, and keeping a count on the stitch count between them every 4 rows

Having said that, it’s come out lovely, and my friend, who is wearing it over a dark red dress for her wedding, loves it.

I tried out a different blocking pinning technique, and threaded cotton yarn through the holes on each edge, and stretched the shawl out on the pinned out cotton yarn. I just put a few pins here and there to even it out. I think this method is much easier and creates a straighter even edge than just using pins.