When I gave my mom the Peacock Feathers Shawl, Grandma fell in love with it. She put it on and told me that I needed to make her something like it. Now, if you know my grandmother, you know that giving her an intricate lace shawl made out of 100% wool is just crazy. As a crocheter of lace doilies, she gets the lace thing. She appreciates the workmanship involved in creating such a lovely thing as lace. The problem is Grandma’s laundry habits. Everything is washed in hot water and dried in the dryer. When she had a yard, she hung the laundry on the line in the backyard, but that’s the only drip-drying she would ever do. The woman is hard on her laundry. Now, if you need to remove a 10 year old mystery stain in one wash, Grandma’s your gal. But she also has left a mass of felted wool sweaters in her wake.
Grandma turned 80 last Sunday. I knew I wanted to make her a shawl, but I had to carefully consider the pattern and the yarn. Initially, I thought superwash wool was a good choice. It would allow me to do a lacy pattern in worsted weight. The problem was that my LYS doesn’t carry any superwash wool suitable for this project. After using Vanna’s Choice for the Baby Surprise Jacket, I thought I’d look for some more of it in a different color for Grandma’s shawl. That yarn comes in a wide range of really nice colors. I settled on a lovely blue that I found at Michael’s.
Next, choosing a pattern. Since I would be using an acrylic yarn, lace was out of the question because of the lack of blocking ability. I spent several hours researching patterns on Ravelry and narrowed the search down to a few choices. The Landscape Shawl is what I eventually settled on because it had a lot of texture without much lace. So it wouldn’t bore the hell out of me, but was still simple.
Please excuse the kitties. They needed a nap. On the knitting. Right out of the dryer.
Anyway, I did something with this shawl that I’ve never done with a knitting project before – I faked it instead of purchasing the pattern. Normally I would buy the pattern, no problem. But this time I was really lazy. I didn’t want to hunt down the pattern at my LYS, and I didn’t want to wait for a hard copy to be mailed to me. So I looked at as many pictures as I could find and figured it out on my own.
Such tired kitties.
The above photo shows the texture a little better. The bottom “V” is garter stitch. Above that is seed stitch. Above that is stockinette. Above that is moss stitch. The center triangle is reverse stockinette. A “V” of yarn overs separates each section from its neighbor.
And see this? It’s a picot edge.
A CROCHETED picot edge. Yeah, I rock. Never done more than a small bit of single crochet before. Armed with some awesome instructions in the last issue of Knitty (I love “Techniques with Theresa”), I grabbed a crochet hook and went to town. My hands hurt just a few inches into it, but I did it and it turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself.
And Grandma?
She loved it.
