Recent additions to the Purl Diving "Mother of Purl" series of patterns include two new lace shawls: Les Bermudes and Soraya.  They are both available as downloadable PDFs from PatternFish.

Les Bermudes

A storm, a shipwreck, and a mysterious island: "here's a maze trod, indeed, through forth-rights and meanders". Les Bermudes ("The Bermudas") is named after the purported setting of Shakespeare's play The Tempest, a place of myth and enchantment.

"Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands;
Courtsied when you have and kiss'd
The wild waves whist:
Foot it featly here and there,
And sweet sprites bear
The burthen. Hark, hark."

Les Bermudes can be worked with 4- or 5-panels; the materials and instructions for the 5-panel version are in shown in parentheses “()”.

A few more images:

Soraya

Soraya is a name of Persian origin meaning “rich” or “princess”. You won’t need to be rich to make this shawl, but it could make you feel like a princess wearing it!

The lace is charted (no written instructions) and can be worked to make a small or large size triangular shawl. Beads on the edging add a touch of glitter, whichever size you decide on.

Both of the suggested yarns fall in the "heavy fingering" to "light sport" weight category.

For experienced lace knitters.

Some more photos:

An error in the pattern for the Calsada scarf has been reported - a corrected version of the PDF sold through PatternFish has been uploaded, so if you bought a copy there has a "Last Update" date in the page footer prior to 2011-05-30, please go to your account there to download the latest version.

If you purchased a printed copy of the pattern from your LYS, please accept my apologies for the mistake - you can correct it by changing the following text under "Finishing the Edging" on page 2:

From: "Repeat Rows 2 and 3 four times more."

To:"Repeat Rows 2 and 3 three times more."

The two latest Purl Diving patterns from Katherine Matthews are Mala and Les vignes.  Both are available as downloadable PDFs from PatternFish.  Printed patterns are currently available from Shall We Knit? in New Hamburg, Ontario.

Mala

A garland of leaves gently circle the neck in this pretty cowl pattern, named Mala after the character played by Indian actress Rani Mukherjee in her first film. The cowl comes in two sizes, small and large, with the instructions for the large size given in parentheses.

This is a lacy pattern, but it’s important to make sure the stockinette leaves are not knit too loosely. Adjust your needle size accordingly to match the gauge and blocked measurements.

Here are a few more images:

Les vignes

Like a vineyard stretching out to the horizon, this simple lace pattern winds its way down the shawl.

Les vignes (vineyards in French) may be worked with two panels for a traditional triangle shape, or three panels to allow it to drape gracefully around the neck and over the shoulders.

Both written and charted instructions for the lace are provided. Both 2- and 3-panel versions of the shawl can be worked in either of two sizes: small or large. See the schematic in the images (under "Click below for all images in detail") for sizing and shape details.

And like a fine vintage, this is a design you can savour for years to come.

Here are the schematics, to give you an idea of the shapes of the two versions, as well as the dimensions of the two sizes:

And a few more images to give some details:

This site originated as the shownotes blog for my Purl Diving knitting podcast.  After producing a total of 28 episodes of the podcast, life took me in other directions, and one of those was to become more serious about designing and publishing knitting patterns, which coincidentally also use the Purl Diving label.

So my Tech Guy has rebuilt the website to feature my Purl Diving knitting patterns, and also set up a separate archive site for the podcast to allow new listeners to continue to discover it (the stats show it's still finding a new audience).  If you're interested in downloading the episodes, the easiest way is to subscribe in iTunes (full instructions are on the podcast site).

The blog on this site will now be used principally for announcements regarding new patterns, additional retailers where you can buy printed copies of patterns and updated information about specific patterns.  You can subscribe to the blog's feed in the sidebar or follow @purldiving on Twitter in order to automatically receive new posts.

I post more general knitting content, including thoughts about the design process, on my Apparknitchik blog.

Please have a look around, I'd love to hear your feedback on the new site - you can leave a comment on this post, or email me using the link in the sidebar.