Monday, September 2, 2019

From the Ashes Silk Shawl


I finished a quick little summer shawl!  The pattern is the From the Ashes Shawl from Rachy Newin Designs.  I started it when I was called home unexpectedly for a family funeral.  (The pattern name seems somehow appropriate for such an event.)  I wanted something very small to work on, so I took just 1 skein of the 3 used in the piece, and uploaded the pattern PDF to my kindle.  The yarn, a few stitch marker, and hook all fit in a little zippered pouch that I could tuck in my purse while traveling. 

The yarn is Darn Good Yarn's Sport Weight Silk in colorway Popsicle.  I received 1 skein of it as a selection of the month in their subscription yarn club.  Later I received a second skein as a promotion they were running where you could add a surprise to your subscription box for just $5.  Since I now had two, I picked up a third skein later, so I'd have enough to make something light and lacy.  It is such a dream to work with.  It glides across your skin, and whatever the detergent they use on the yarn smells pleasant, but not overwhelming.  I found myself sometimes sniffing my project.  Is that weird?  Wait, never mind.  It's totally weird, but I don't care.

As for the pattern, I initially had a bit of trouble with it.  The directions per row are a dense block of text, and even with the text size turned up on my kindle, it was easy to get lost within the paragraph.  I did the first 8 rows easily enough, but by row 10 I could tell something was off.  I frogged and restitched rows 8-12 a few times, not quite figuring out what was wrong, and getting a bit frustrated.  Finally I decided to walk away for a little while.  I took a nice shower, did a few errands, and had some lunch.  Lo and behold, when I got back to my parents house, there had been an update on the pattern, and it now had a diagram!  The diagram made all the difference, and I discovered that I had simply missed an asterisk in row 10, leading to 2 too many stitches.  It also made me realize how far I've come with reading crochet diagrams over text directions!

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