Midnight Shawl Finished! (aka Passing the Time)

So you remember I said on Sunday that I’d gotten a sore throat after hiking. HAHAHA. What a joke! Five boring days later, I am still horribly sick, and I have bronchitis. The last time I had an upper respiratory virus this badly I was 15, and got bronchitis out of the deal then, too. I managed to do a limited amount of crocheting this past week while semi-upright in bed. I love crafts you can do while immobile.

I finished not one but two crochet projects while propped up watching reruns of eighties TV shows, but only one is ready for presentation. I was pretty close to completing both anyway, and I’m thrilled to have them out of the WIP bag. The first one finished was the shawl I started last fall. I think the finished project is beautiful, both before and after blocking. I rarely have much need to block anything since I don’t usually use animal fiber yarn, but given the alpaca and the open lace pattern I decided it was worth it. Before blocking it was more of a scarf-size, after blocking it definitely now is shawl-size. I love it!

The back: great drape! Hangs really nicely.

I only had about a foot of yarn left when it was done, it was definitely the right pattern for the amount of yarn I had. I made one pattern adjustment at the end. The scarf is crocheted with a 3-row-repeat, but in my shawl the last repeat has only two of the rows. The rest of the yarn went to making a scallop border on the flat edge, which is made up of row-ends. I think adding that border stabilized that edge of the shawl and also corrected some of the funkiness that row-ends can sometimes cause. Plus it sort of matches better than having a straight edge.

What do you do without a proper blocking board? Dig into the 50 boxes you still have from moving.You can vaguely see the color difference between the 2 skeins of yarn I used. One was slightly less saturated with color.

I really liked this pattern, and I think it shows off the yarn well. I used a large hook with 2-ply yarn to make a fluid and open fabric, which is quite unlike my usual projects which take advantage of crochet’s thick, structural nature. Crochet just makes giant artistically placed holes without a problem and the fabric still retains a high degree of stability no matter how open it is.

Before blocking it was much more dense. It didn’t look bad though.

I did find this type of open work crochet a bit frustrating. It can be hard to tell what you’re doing, and many times I wondered if I’d put my hook in the right place or not. I don’t think it’s a beginner pattern for that reason.  I wondered, with all its holey-ness, if it would still be warm but that’s the trick with alpaca – it is WARM no matter what. It’s the perfect thing, in fact, for someone who’s been sick for a week and needs to wrap up to face the cold rainy weather!

Previous shawl posts: Expensive Yarn Crisis | After a Few False Starts …

P.S. Thanks for the input on the coat! I think I’m going to leave the coat as is. I have a terrible tendency to look at things and think “that needs embroidery!” when they really don’t. Actually, a tendency to over do things in general. Still … I miss embroidering. Going to have to do some of that soon.