The inspiration behind this piece is Johanna of Castile (also known as Johanna the Mad) was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and the older sister of Katharine of Aragon. Poised at the crux of multiple powerful Tudor-era families, she was married to the heir to the Holy Roman Empire, and should have been a powerful ruler in her own right. After the death of her husband, she was declared insane and incarcerated in a nunnery while her father ruled as regent for her son, Frederick. Debate about whether she was truly suffering from a mental illness or simply a pawn in the political intrigues of Europe at this time still surrounds her.
This shawl is a half-circle shape, worked with two types of increases from the center back neck down to the hem. The pattern features intertwined Tudor cables and floral lace patterns, and is finished with a simple lace bind-off, to form a cape-like shape.
The original sample was knit with two skeins of Wooly Wonka Fibers' Laysa Sock yarn in the colorway Castile. The sample took almost all of the 800 yards for those skeins to complete. It could be knit with any fingering-weight yarn with a firm twist and without much halo to show off all the stitch patterns.
I'm so happy with how this design came out!
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