The grandmother who taught me to crochet turns 80 next month. As she loves the look of handmade lace, I decided to make her a shawl.

Pattern: Dee O’Keefe’s Elizabath shawl. I think this is a beautifully written pattern; it has a lot of detail to get started, and then everything you need is in the charts (which I prefer to use). The number of stitches after each repeat of the charts are much appreciated.

Yarn: I was recommended to find something “dove grey with blue in it,” and so selected Malabrigo silkpaca in Polar Morn. It appears to be a barely heathered grey up close. It is definitely a two ply, and those plies are easily separated if I’m not careful. It makes the yarn feel a bit fragile to me.

Execution: I am knitting this with HiyaHiya Sharp 3.25mm 5in tips on a 32 inch cable. I think that I am getting about gauge, though I could be a bit looser. At this point, I am following the directions exactly and didn’t have any reasons to change that. I switched up to a 3.75 mm tip to bind-off.