FO: Cwtch Shawl

Last summer I was given a gorgeous skein of Natural Dye Studio Scheherazade in the colourway Wisteria, as part of a swap package.

Such a hard colour to capture. It's pink, not lilac!

About a month later - during Wimbledon I think, so pretty much exactly a year ago - I decided it was destined to become the Cwtch Shawl. I worked on it irregularly, and it was the end of October before I had finally finished.

This is more like the colour

Unfortunately, the bind off suggested in the pattern was nowhere near stretch enough, and I couldn't block it. At the time, I wasn't up to the challenge of unpicking the bind off and finding a stretchier one. Fastforward to now, and I've got a few more shawls under my belt and a lot more understanding/experience in knitting generally. So I decided it was time I did something about it.

I had to go back to the pattern to remind myself how I had bound off (on a purl row, p2tog, pass stitch back to left needle, repeat) and what stitches I should have on the needle when I was done. Once I'd got my head around it, the rest was easy.

I re-did the bind off with a crochet hook, adding a chain stitch between each bound off stitch. Lazy Katy uses a similar bind off and the results were amazing, so I was confident I'd get the bind off I was looking for.

Isn't that better? And for some reason, it looks purple again.

As soon as it was bound off, it was in the sink and onto the blocking boards. The end result is beautiful.

I increased the size to include two more hearts in the border, but screwed up the maths as the pattern has a mistake in the stitch counts. So my centre point is a little off on the border and I had to fudge it a bit. I suppose I could have tinked back to add more stitches but I really couldn't be bothered. It's barely noticeable anyway.

The heart pattern is adorable! And in this yarn (a camel/silk blend) it is a dream to wear. It's so floaty.

There is a part of me that is kind of sad I didn't get around to doing this sooner, as I think it would have been a lovely shawl to wear on my wedding day. Given the temperatures on the day (and the rain!), I'm glad I didn't though, as the shop-bought pashmina I ended up with was a lot bigger than this!