The Spring shawl making continued...

 This time a crochet shawl... During the spring of this year, the lovely Sandra of cherry heart blog organised a Hotel of Bees CAL, for the Hotel of Bees shawl by Christina Hadderingh. Eager to crochet along with Sandra I purchased the pattern, thought about colours, searched for suitable yarn in chosen colours, struggled to find what I wanted in those colours, found colours in a cotton yarn, decided cotton would be fine, in fact great as this could be a summer shawl, purchased yarn and set to.

I do like the yarn in its little pile, but I do wish I had thought a little harder about a one hundred percent cotton shawl, a large-ish 5ply shawl. This is oh so heavy and I imagine will stretch a lot - if it is ever worn.

Because sadly for this poor shawl, I don't think it has been worn once... and not just because of my poor yarn content choice. So eager was I to join in the fun of the CAL that I didn't really pay much attention to the finished shawl, and while it was a great pattern to crochet with lots of techniques, and the pattern itself was so well written, the finished shawl is just a bit bitty I think for my liking. I have since seen a version crocheted in one colour however, which I do like and I really, really like the honeycomb effect in some of the sections.

Hmmm, so what to do with it? I am quite proud of the finished thing and yet it isn't something I reach for from my pile of shawls and it seems a bit of a waste for it to sit in the wardrobe. Oh well, maybe it will grow on me (hopefully not in the stretching sense) next summer... Details of (poor) yarn choice can be seen on my Ravelry page here

Just the weather for a shawl

Oh September and October, you have been so full of horrible illness for this little family... it started with the cold P got in the first week of term, which he then lovingly shared, followed by yet more colds, a bout of flu and now a persistent cough for me that is proving rather tiresome. The garden still needs autumnal attention, the house needs a thorough clean. Yuk. The good thing about October though is the regular necessity of a shawl again

This was my introduction to Helen Stewart's patterns... the Spindrift Shawl, knitted last wintertime. I think I chose this one to knit first as the pattern is rather generously provided for free once you sign up to an email workshop.

I really like the way Helen's patterns are written - my current swim project is another of Helen's shawls, and the format of the patterns mean that I can easily keep track of rows even when being a good Mummy and glancing up to see how P is doing in training. So much support is available in the Ravelry Spindrift group (another thing common to Helen's patterns and particularly useful and motivating for the more complex Snowmelt Shawl).

I had been saving the precious remains of my first skein of dreamy Cosmic Strings (used to knit a pair of yet-to-be-blogged wristwarmers, made probably a year ago. How remiss) and this gorgeous single ply merino yarn has made such a soft shawl. The pretty colourway is rose garden, purchased summer 2016, so most likely no longer available but I know that I could happily buy many skeins of their yarn each time I look, so no doubt there will be some gorgeous colourway to tempt you. The wristwarmers meant that I had to combine a second yarn, though normally this would be a one skein pattern. I knit the wristwarmers with a contrast rib (reminder to dig them out from the bottom of the knits basket and photograph them) in a 4 ply though I think the Cosmic Strings yarn is more of a lightweight 4 ply, so for this shawl I paired it with the similar weight Coop Knits socks yeah in Danburite.

I'm off to cosy up with another October highlight - cinnamon tea. Yum