Have you ever found a beautiful pattern in an antique knitting book with bewildering instructions that gave you a headache? In this article, I’ll go over the basic information you need to begin making heads or tails out of vintage and antique patterns. Several of the projects in this book include facsimiles of original nineteenth-century patterns as well as our updated instructions and charts… read more in Stories In Stitches 5.

This pattern was originally published in My Knitting Book by Miss Lambert in 1843. I’ve updated the instructions for modern knitters. Would you have interpreted all of the instructions the same way I did? Mine came out to be a half rectangle, not a half-square. The size small is closer to a square than the size large is. The larger you make this shawl, the more elongated the shape becomes.