A couple of months ago, a friend at church gave me this pile of yarn…with the Mexican Rainbow Shawl from the Prayer Shawl Companion book in mind. We’re both making shawls for our church ministry and had fallen in love with this pattern. She surprised me by buying the yarn for it!
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Alas, try as I might, I couldn’t make the yarn work with the pattern! The pattern is written for DK weight, and the Vanna’s Choice just did not want to play nice!
So, I frogged what I had done (the center section and two of the orange sides) and went back to the drawing board…finally deciding on La La’s Simple Shawl, which is a free download on Ravelry.
This pattern allowed me to incorporate each colored yarn and, IMHO, gives it a “South of the Border” feel.
[CENTER][B]Project Stats
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[CENTER]Date Started – June 22[/CENTER]
[CENTER]Date Completed – July 2
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[CENTER]Yarn – Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice:[ul]
[li]Rust – 17 yards[/li][li]Scarlet – 34 yards[/li][li]Eggplant – 55 yards[/li][li]Colonial Blue – 76.5 yards[/li][li]Olive -102 yards[/li][li]Mustard – 229.5 yards[/ul][/CENTER][/li]The pattern did not specify a bind-off, so I used EZ’s Sewn Cast Off. I like this bind off because it’s stretchy and invisible. And it’s easy (although tedious when you have 265 stitches!!).
Forgive the state of my hair. I woke up this morning and rushed to dress so I could get my daughter to take pictures before she heads to the beach for the day…hence no shower and no tamed hair (not that this is possible with living in Florida and having naturally-curly hair)…
That came out great! I work with a lot of that same yarn, easily obtained in Hobby Lobby. Wonder if I could knit myself a great big Mexican poncho the same way? Hmmmm, may have to work that out.
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][COLOR=purple]Very pretty. I The colors.[/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][COLOR=#800080]Did you notice this http://www.shawlministry.com/tip_pages/corrections.htm [/COLOR][/FONT]
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][COLOR=#800080]I was looking at the booklet and found the corrections.[/COLOR][/FONT]
I check several places. First, I’ll google “errata for such-and-such pattern.”
I also look for the pattern on Ravelry. Once I find it, I read the comments about it. I’ll even look at other people’s projects to see what they had to say about it…maybe it ran big, maybe they had problems with a particular part of the pattern.
I just started working on a pair of socks, and through my google search, I found a link to a KAL on Ravelry. On the KAL page, I found information that helped me decipher part of the pattern, plus I was able to ask some questions when I ran into a problem.
I have to thank ArtLady for always encouraging us to read the pattern and do our homework. She helped me realize that to take my knitting to another level, I need to be put in a little bit of extra time prepping first.
I work with a lot of that same yarn, easily obtained in Hobby Lobby. Wonder if I could knit myself a great big Mexican poncho the same way? Hmmmm, may have to work that out.
The colors.[/COLOR][/FONT]