How to Knit the Feather and Fan Stitch

The feather and fan stitch is one of the most popular lace stitches in the world of knitting and for a good reason -- it's gorgeous! You might also know this stitch as the Old Shale stitch, but no matter what you call it, there's a lot of dimension to this stitch, and the increases and decreases will give you that nice, wavy edge that's associated with this stitch.

While this particular lace stitch looks very complicated, it's actually a good one for knitters who are just learning the knits and purls of lacing. For the most part, the yarn overs and k2togs line up nicely across the rows, so it's great for learning how to "read" your knitting and approach lace in a more intuitive way, beyond just following the pattern itself.

One other great this about the feather and fan stitch is that it's just a 4-row repeat! Because of that, you can squeeze this stunning design into just about any scarf, shawl, or hat you can imagine. That said, the true beauty of this stitch starts to show itself after a couple of repeats of the pattern, so having just one 4-row piece of feather and fan isn't going to give you the shape you're probably expecting.