Project Backstory: When I was a teenager in Michigan, we had these heavenly orange and yellow azaleas in our backyard. Yes, heavenly! I adored them so much that when I was away from home at university, I used to draw and paint pictures of them. I didn’t really get homesick for home, but I did miss those gorgeous, vibrantly colored azaleas! Since my parents sold the house in 1999, I’ve always longed for some orange and yellow azalea plants of my own, but either I can never seem to find the right plants, or I have nowhere to plant them. So, when I saw this vibrantly yellow, orange, and sometimes almost red Zen Azalea yarn from Lion Brand, I knew I had to try it. Great colors, and the perfect name to boot!

The shawl has a lace pattern on the border that is supposed to resemble a ginkgo leaf; hence the pattern name. Personally, I don’t think it looks like a ginkgo leaf at all; the ginkgo leaves I remember from the trees in my hometown have a very distinctive shape, like a fan, and - I’m sorry, but - this is NOT it. More like a birch leaf shape, maybe. BUT, it could look like an azalea leaf! So, I thought, why not call this my Zen Azalea Leaf Shawl? It has the leaves, and it has the colors of the azaleas from my childhood. So, every time I wear it, I can “zen out” and travel back in time to those halcyon days of my youth…

One more thing about this Shawl in a Ball yarn: it is NOT aran weight. I’d struggle even to call it DK; it’s more like sport weight. The yarn varies in thickness, ranging from DK weight to possibly light worsted, and it has very occasional fuzzy spots that make it knit up thicker than a DK normally would, and maybe they based the weight rating on these thick spots, but at no point does it ever approach aran weight. I don’t know who comes up with these categorizations sometimes! Also, the fuzz makes it difficult to frog in spots, as I found when I frogged my gauge swatch. So, note to self: don’t make any mistakes!

OK, enough know-it-all statements - on to the actual knitting! ;-) I like the garter tab idea; I’ve never actually done it before, though I’ve read about them, and it works out very well, better than I’d expected.
I am going with 6 repeats of the leaf pattern across each half of the scsrf, so I knit in stockinette until Row 91 (187 sts), then added 1 st by doing a pfb in the innermost (I think) of the 2 purl stitches on each edge of the first row of the lace pattern, thus achieving the requisite 189 stitches needed for 12 repeats of the pattern. I want to make sure the shawl is big enough, because this yarn is 58% cotton and 39% acrylic, so I don’t expect it to block out by much, especially the stockinette portion, yet I was afraid 7 repetitions might be too big. If it still looks too small when I finish, I can always do an extra repetition of the leaf pattern; it looks like I’ll have more than enough yarn.

I’m on Row 8 of the leaf pattern/lace chart as of 9/13. The lace pattern is quite easy to follow, very enjoyable to knit, and is going quickly. Note that the pattern as charted doesn’t include the two border garter stitches on either edge. Also, I am reversing the left-leaning decreases to right-leaning (and vice versa), as I just like the way it looks better, even though the pattern would lie much flatter if knitted as written. Besides, if I change my mind, I can always reverse them later on, and then some of the leaves will just stand out more than others, just like real foliage. The LLD on the purl side slows me down a bit. I don’t know if I’m doing it wrong or what, but SSP just does not go in the right direction to match my lines; both p2tog and SSP are right-leaning decreases, and I need it to lean left. So I’m doing sort of a purl-slip-slip both back-PSSO type of thing. Oh well, I guess that’s what happens when you alter patterns as you go - sometimes you have to invent new stitches! ;-)

I came up with an easy way of remembering the lace pattern so that I only need to look at the chart once or twice per row. If you are experienced in lace knitting, this should make sense to you: I quickly realized that each “leaf” repetition of 15 stitches (between which I placed markers to make it much easier) contains 11 single stitches (knits on the RS, purls on the WS), plus one YO and one decrease, aside from the column of two ‘reversed’ stitches (P2 on RS, k2 on WS) that create the background/breaks between the leaf pattern repetitions (which I basically consider to be part of the border between the repetitions anyway). Each row, thus, has a total of 11 single stitches which can be separated into before, between, and after the ‘special’ stitches (YOs and decreases). The first row, for example, is 1-0-10 (k1, YO, blank, decrease, k10), followed by your two reversed stitches, and then these numbers are just reversed/mirrored on the opposite side - much like a palindrome in language - after you pass the center stitch/portion. The second row is 0-2-9 (blank, YO, k2, decrease, k9); the third row is 2-1-8 (k2, YO, k1, decrease, K8), and so on.

Once I wrote these sets of three reference numbers down in the margin next to each row number, it makes it quite easy to remember how many stitches you need to knit or purl in between your YOs or decreases for that particular row, and once you’ve done a couple of rows, it’s easy to see where the YOs and decreases need to go, and what type of decrease you need, by just looking at your knitting, et voila! - you shouldn’t have to look at the chart again until the next row. After 8 rows, these numbers are simply reversed again, and then at Row 17, the pattern just repeats again from Row 1. If your mind works like mine does, and this actually makes sense to you, then writing these numbers in the margin should help you to get through the chart with a minimum of looking at it, at least after the first few rows. Here they are, so you don’t have to count them out:

Row 1: 1-0-10, (center), 10-0-1
(it may be easier to think of the 0 as a blank: 1-blank-10, or even just 1-10)
Row 2: 0-2-9, (center), 9-2-0
Row 3: 2-1-8, (center), 8-1-2
Row 4: 1-3-7, (center), 7-3-1
Row 5: 3-2-6, (center), 6-2-3
Row 6: 2-4-5, (center), 5-4-2
Row 7: 4-3-4, (center), 4-3-4
Row 8: 3-5-3, (center), 3-5-3
Row 9 is just row 1 reversed: 10-0-1, (center), 1-0-10
And so on.
At Row 17, you start again from Row 1. The repeat finishes at Row 32.

When you get to Row 17, you’ll begin to have extra leaves in the center section (and at Row 25, in the edge sections) on top of this, but they are structured almost exactly the same as the leaves within the repetitions on the same row, with only minimal changes to the “long” string of stitches before/after your “special stitches” (for lack of a better term). So by the time you get this far, it should be pretty easy to continue along, especially if you’ve used stitch markers between the reps. This will probably all look like gobbledygook to some of you, but hopefully, this tip will help someone else out … and all this typing will have been worth it!

Update: I am adding a repetition of Rows 1-16 after Row 32 of the lace pattern, because even after doing 90 rows of stockinette before starting, it only measured about 20” along the center, and each half’s “hypotenuse” about 26” as of Row 26. Some ad hoc re-working of the center and edge stitches is being done at this point to try to re-shape those leaves.

9/21/2019: Speed bump! Got to Row 125 (3rd line of repeating the lace pattern when I took my knitting outside for the first time. The red portion of the yarn (invisible to me inside the skein when I bought it), which I wasn’t thrilled about finding to begin with, looked halfway decent indoors, just a dark warm red. But when I got it out into broad daylight, I saw that it looks like a kind of neon fuschia color, tinged heavily with blue overtones. I really wanted a warm yellow/bright orange shawl, and now I have this stripe of … magenta running through it!! Since I can’t plan to only wear the shawl indoors, I’m afraid I’m going to have to frog back to where the red begins (Row 107, or Row 17 of the lace pattern) and cut that section out. The red only takes up about 8 or 9 rows of the shawl, but I’d done another 10 rows since the red ended, and at over 250 stitches per row of lace knitting, I’m mot thrilled about losing nearly 20 rows/4 inches. Still, I’m glad I caught it NOW and not after it was finished and blocked … I would’ve been very unhappy to find that hot purple stripe running through my shawl! But, I DID say I enjoyed knitting this pattern, right? Well, it looks like I’ll get to knit more of it….!

Threading through a lifeline at Row 107 now in preparation for frogging. Which is a lot easier when Row 107 is still on the needle, let me tell you! Stay tuned, sports fans!

10/5/19: Thanks to having to remove the awful magenta section, I am GOING to run out of yarn mid-Row 138 … with only 3 rows to go. I think I have something I can use to finish it up, but … bummer. I decided to go with Deborah Norville Everyday in Lemon; I had it in my stash, and the color matches beautifully with the yellow portion of the original; it will make a nice border. But since it’s worsted weight, I had to strip it down to two 2-ply strands, about 13 yards of it (26 yards total). THAT’S always fun. The visible twist in the yarn matches up well with the kinks in the original yarn, though so that should work out OK. I’m afraid it’s still noticeably thicker than the original yarn in most spots, but 1 ply was too thin (I did try it). And I don’t know how well it will block. Good thing it’s only for the last 3-1/2 rows! I’m starting the bind-off row now … (10/16/19)

FINISHED! Ended up stripping the Everyday down to 1 ply as 2 ply just looked too thick. NOTE: binding off with 1 ply is a pain. It had to he done very slowly and carefully, as each stitch kept pulling out the slack from the last … I finally ended up just knitting the rest of the final row on the US 11 needle, then going back to the other end and binding the existing sts off each other. That was the only way to make them retain their size so I didn’t have to keep frogging and re-doing it. Yes, I did use a size 11 for the BO row … it is quite a jump in size, but neither the 10s nor the 10.5s looked big enough for how I plan to block it. Blocking still to come …