Making a shawl for my niece. She is having a winter wedding and asked for a shawl to keep her shoulders warm during her reception. Of course I said yes! :)

This yarn is the perfect color. It’s the same color (exactly) as her bridesmaids bouquets. It’s a thick thin yarn…and the slubs have colors of lighter and darker purples and bits of green. Its really lovely. It’s thicker than the recommended, but not a lot thicker. The gal at the shop says its a DK weight…but I see on Rav it’s not rated as that. What with working it up, I’d say lighter than DK, prolly sport weight-ish. The gal at Stitches with Style was super helpful in finding this perfect match color! :) Hopefully the merino wool will keep my niece warm, too.

11/30 I have marked my shawl base with stitch markers every 10 rows so I don’t have to keep counting so much. Im lazy that way.

12/20 Ok. So while this yarn is perfect for the colors…it’s hard to see when crocheting along the edge. Ugh. The thick and thin nature makes it really hard to see the beautiful stitches clearly. After several false starts I am using the markers I used to count the rows in making the solid base…to help me with the stitches/count along the edge for my first row of the border. It’s helping, but its still a pain!

1/16 I stopped the border at row 18. I really didn’t think it needed the last two rows, so I ripped them back. I blocked the shawl lightly and it helped with the ‘bunching’ that so many have mentioned.

After a light blocking the shawl measures
56.5” wide
21.5” deep
6.25” border

Notes
Lots of stitch markers were very helpful with this project. I used them to keep track of my rows while making the solid sc base (really…I didn’t want to keep having to count getting to the 90 rows). I used them to help with counting my foundation sc row when starting the border pattern. The thick/thin nature of my yarn may have made this row harder to discern, I’m not sure. I marked row 10 with stitch markers to know where to put the row 11 stitches (it made row 11 ever so much easier).

I really enjoyed making this shawl. The yarn was lovely tho the thick/thin nature of it made the border crocheting a little harder for me probably. The base was pretty much mindles TV crocheting…always nice. The border looked more intimidating than it was actually working it. Counting every row is essential I believe for making this easier. Lightly blocking made a big difference for me…it took care of the bunching at the center border area that many others also experienced.