Notice the big bobbles. Those are called nupps. A number of lace patterns use them and they give another dimension to the texture of the lace. It's used in traditional Estonian lace knitting.
A while ago I called p3tog 'the mother of all stitches' but the nupp leaves that stitch way behind. It involves making 5, 7 or even 9 into a single stitch, and then purling them all together on the return purl row.
To make 5 in 1, you knit one, pass the yarn over (YO), then knit another into the same stitch, YO again and then knit again. There's usually a YO on each side of the nupp to make it really stand out.
You have to make those increase stitches very loose to stand a chance of getting your needle back in to purl them together. I made a mess of the first couple (once it starts to go wrong, it's a nightmare trying to rescue it) and I found that using a crochet hook made it much easier and neater. Just push your hook through the 5 stitches purlwise and use it to pull the working yarn back through.
This video shows knitting nupps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRGVsd3Hy4M
Here's a link to the swallowtail shawl pattern I'm making:
http://www.evelynclarkdesigns.com/portfolio.html
And another scarf that makes use of the 'lily of the valley' motif
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lily-of-the-valley-estonian-lace-scarf---estniska-liljekonvaljer#
The beautiful stitch markers are from Helena Hancart.
Thanks to Peter Smith for some of these links.
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