Crochet Shawlmania!

This winter I didn’t catch the flu. Or a cold. Or any other disease, for that matter. But, I did catch a shawlmania! Yes, totally! The whole December I didn’t do anything else but crochet different kinds of shawls. One for myself, one for my sister, one for my mother in law, one for my friend… I even started making the fifth one, but I haven’t finished it yet. And I’m not sure if I will, because I started several new projects in the meantime, and I’m not quite happy with how the shawl is developing…

I absolutely love all 4 shawls I made, and enjoyed making every single one of them.

The first shawl I made this winter is The Winifred shawl, the lovely pattern by The Loopy Stitch. The pattern is beautiful, and I really enjoyed making it. I decided to use the yarn I already had in my stash, Bodrum from Alize, 48% linen, 52% polyester, 280m/100g. I love that yarn. And I love how the shawl turned out.

I made this shawl for myself, and I haven’t blocked it yet. I know. This is how I treat myself. I shouldn’t treat myself like that. I’ve just soaked the shawl in wool wash, and I’m going to block it!

The second shawl I made is Victoria shawl, the pattern by Sandra Cherry Heart. The best thing about this shawl is the pattern itself. Don’t get me wrong the shawl is gorgeous, but Sandra did such a great job with this pattern. It’s very well written and clear (there are written instructions as well as the crochet chart, and there is even the stitch counts chart), I just loved how easy the process of making it was.

I used Angora Gold Simli, from Alize, 75% acrylic, 20% wool, 5% metalized polyester, 500m/100g

I made it as a Christmas present for my mother in law, and she is thrilled!

The third shawl was a real joy to make, because it is a butterfly shawl, and because I made it for my sister. She’s one of my favorite people on the planet. She loves butterflies, always taking pictures of them; they often fly down on her hand. I’m a dog person myself. She’s a butterfly person.

So, what other shawl to make for a butterfly person but a butterfly shawl? The pattern is called Butterfly Stitch Prayer Shawl, by Debi Adams, and it is a free Ravelry download.

For this project I chose really lovely yarn from Alize, Cotton Gold Tweed, sprinkled with small colorful particles, which I thought butterflies would like. It is 57% cotton, 40% acrylic, 3% polyester, 330m/100g

So, I enjoyed crocheting this shawl for my sister. I made it as a birthday present, and she apparently loves it because I often see her wearing it.

And my last finished shawl this winter was Abrupt shawl by Rebecca Velasquez. I love that pattern. I love how geometrical and modern it looks. I loved it so much that I actually started on the second one, but I’m not quite in love with the colors I had chosen, so maybe I won’t finish it, but I would like to make at least one more with different colors and different yarn. Maybe something wooly, next time.

I now realized that this is the only shawl that I didn’t make with Alize yarn. That’s very strange, considering that I almost always use cotton yarn, like Tango, Golf, Tanja, or other yarn made by some domestic manufacturer. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I wanted to try some new yarn, to try something different. So, for this one I used my beloved Tanja 100% cotton yarn, 125m/50g (from Bimtex, Serbia) three different shades of blue. And I absolutely adore it.

I made it for my dear friend, who is also my English teacher, and besides my sister, my greatest cheerleader.

Shawlmania has passed me, but I’m afraid that I’ve just caught another bug, knitmania, to be precise. The signs of knitmania have been present for a while now. I’ve been watching knitting podcasts for months, even though I can’t knit, and this past weekend while I was watching some of Kristy Glass’ knit podcasts, I got a strong desire to try knitting. It was Saturday afternoon, all craft stores were closed and I didn’t have any knitting needles (because I’m not a knitter and I can’t knit). But I was so eager to start, you aren’t going to believe this, but I took some wooden kebab skewers and just had a go. It wasn’t so bad, actually. I managed to knit maybe 20 to 30 quite decent looking rows, especially taking into account that they were made with kebab skewers! I practiced casting on, and some basic stitches like the knit stitch, the purl stitch and the seed stitch. Now, writing this, I’m thinking about what shawl pattern I should try first, should I knit something easy, or should I try to make something more demanding, what yarn to buy, or maybe I already have some yarn I could use… my brain is very busy at the moment. So, knitmania, it is. If you are not a knitter don’t worry. Crochet is still my first love, and I will continue to crochet and make patterns, at least when knitmania passes me by.