South Bay Shawl reveal!

This summer has been crazy so far, what with home improvements to be done and high school reunions to attend.  But things seem to be slowing back down again.  So let's all hope that I actually start blogging more often again.

Here's the finished project that I teased you all with in the last post:

It turned out to be a shawl that I made especially to wear to my high school reunion, but never actually got to wear it because it was never cold enough inside the ballroom.  Just as well probably, because the shawl might have been a little too busy to go with the dress I chose, but I was working with stash yarn, and I didn't have enough to make it elegantly all one color. (This shawl was quite the yarn-eater, especially considering that it's a lace pattern.)

Pattern is called the South Bay Shawlette, and it's a free pattern from Lion Brand (but you have to sign up to their websight to see it if you're not already a member.  But it's free to do so and as far as I can tell they don't send too much spam.)  You can see how gorgeous the pattern is in the above close-up, and it's suprisingly easy to do, especially if you just follow the diagram. This was the first pattern where I virtually ignored the written pattern and went strictly off the diagram, but I'm pretty sure if I'd only had the written pattern to go from it would have been a much more frustrating pattern.  As it was, it almost crocheted itself.  Very easy and very nice results.  I plan to make another one eventually, maybe in all one color, or maybe in an ombre of a different color pattern because even though at first I only changed colors because I realized I didn't have enough yarn to finish, once I saw the ombre effect I really liked it.

I used two different kinds of yarn, both cotton.  The two darker colors were Omega Sinfonia and the lighter blue was Nashua Creative Focus cotton dk.  Now I love me some Sinfonia because I love mercerized cotton and I love not having to pay a fortune for it, but that Nashua yarn was so much more luxurious than the Sinfonia.  It's egyptian cotton and it really is significantly soften than the regular ole cotton that I'm used to.  The only down side to working with it was that it was so splitty, so I had to go super slow on that last section, but after blocking that light blue yarn was even softer that before!

Here's a couple of (really terrible) pictures of me wearing the shawl:

Please everyone, just concentrate on the shawl.  See how pretty that shawl is?
Too bad I didn't get any pictures of me looking fabulous at the reunion in the dress with the shawl, but such is life.

Here's a couple of pictures of the finished floor for those who wanted to see that:

We LOVE our new floors!