Giant smiles here!

The Design

Here is now Nim describes her beautiful shawl, The Peacock's Tale:

The Peacock’s Tale is the first in the Oriental Tales series, and is highly customisable, so the knitter can tell their own tale.

Adaptable, modular, and fun, this is a pattern that wants to be played with.

Begin with the smallest feathers, progressing through larger and more lacy feathers as you move towards the dramatic edging.

Choose any number of repeats of each feather size, add beads if your peacock really wants to attract attention (and most do!)

Then end the tale in your own way, either with straight feathers radiating outward, (as in my own shawl), or by taking the alternating path, and creating a fan of feathers with shimmering eyelets.

Extend, repeat, switch from one edge to the other, as your yarn wants to!

Nim mentions that this pattern is "ideal for gradients, eye-catching in solids and semi-solids, or try a variegated yarn to create a peacock in dappled light."

Beads

The number of beads used in this shawl are completely up to you. Nim suggests size 6/0 so that they really stand out.

There is a write-up where Nim figured out how many beads it would take to do three per feather (for an all-over beaded look; this would add beads to absolutely everything) on a huge shawl: take a look here (Ravelry).  She tells me that she herself knit 7 beaded repeats, for a total of 230-ish beads and she used the size 6/0s.