Elise shawl V.2

And yeay! V.2 of the Elise Shawl is done.  

It is huge.  It is half a blanket.  It is a triangular blanket.  

Which is what I wanted - something to permanently leave in the car for those days when you spend 2-3 hours between school and judo, hurrying up and waiting for the half-hours between the beginnings and endings of the boys' extra-murals and suddenly, as it does here,  it turns cold.

And you have nothing. 

But now, now I can get my huge Elise Shawl in the car and wrap myself in it.

This thing gobbled up 626 g of Lollipop Vezuvo Aran (a very, very nice acrylic. I am a total sucker for natural yarns, but when I have something i the colour thath I want , and it is manmade, but the similar in wool/tweed costs almost 9 times that much...and you have to factor in the 626g...then I happily use the acrylic.  If and when a real wool in this colour with this one black fibre rocks up, and it doesn't cost R92/50g, then we can talk).

It also really hurt my arm.  I'm using an obscene amount of Reparil gel on from the shoulder right past my elbow, and I go to sleep while Mr Diclofenac does its thing :-0

That happens when I work too much, too long over a short period of time!

On Instagram I shared some photos of Where I Worked, because it went Everywhere with me:

Starting life at the dojo

Growing a bit at the wheel-alignment center

(And here Blogger is doing That Thing it sometimes does, hence the huge space...)

It went on a road trip to Oudtshoorn, where it spent some time on the dashboard of the car, on a very hot day...

...resulting in a custom grip on my Prym 6

My MIL took one look at the pattern and said she has something similar.

Wouldyabelieveit?! 

Made by my husband's grandmother when MIL was a young 17, sometime around the early '60s

There's a tiny difference - 6DCs in the cluster where the Elise has 5, but that is about all. 

And guess what?  Just a couple of days later, I spotted this lady at the entrance to the veggie shop.  I chatted her up right there to take a look and showed her photos of mine.

She said she would really like a purple one

As it is acrylic, I couldn't really block, plus it is too big to try and steam block, so I just rinsed the shawl and hung it out to dry, pegged in a straight line.

There were so many questions about "what is it there at the bottom point of the shawl??"
It's my supersize  pegs, bought at the R5 shop and usually used to peg jeans :-) Here it added weight to pull the point down, without stretching it too much.

I can't wait to try this shawl out.  It's ready, in the car.  But, as luck would have it, we've just come through the hottest October ever recorded in South Africa - and on the rainy days this week, we weren't out in the cold. 

PS - Behind the scenes - this is what it really looked like :-D

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It's already dark outside when my son takes a quick shot so I can show my sis! 

I take my pose in front of the stationary cupboard in the homework corner, still sporting my beach shorts of earlier that afternoon.

:-)

Ha ha!!

My take on the Elise-shawl

The last couple of years I've been snapping away on our hunting trips, on the beach, in the veld, and noticed a recurring theme...

...starting with this rock rose in the Free State

The next year  when we visited, I noticed it on the aloe as well:

And the thorny cactus thingey on the stoep

(sorry...not into the cactus trend, I don't know the name :-D

 But it's not a new thing.  Remember my Klein Karoo stool cover from this photo?

Can you see it now?

The soft greyish green tipped with pinks?

I kept seeing it everywhere.

Outside a beach house at Gourits:

In the Montagu Pass:

My best ever favourite flower in the Garden Route Botanical Garden:

(look at the stem as well!)

These tiny flowers in the Groot Swartberg near De Rust:

There's no better place for a workshop in colour combination than your nearest outdoors.  

So.  I wanted to make a shawl (having never ever before worn or made a triangular shawl).  It would be greenish and the only colour it could ever be is Vinnis Nikkim Khaki.  Nothing else.  As for the pink tips, I was thinking about a hot pink lacy or tiny tiny edge...then various other pinks came to mind when I started looking through my stash.  In the end I used a softer pink from Elle Premier Cotton.

As for the pattern, I wanted to hook up a lacy shawl, not too difficult, not too holey and the Elise shawl was the obvious one that ticked all the boxes.

I had a whole pile of Khaki squares from trying out patterns for my summer throw and I re-used most of these, so I have no idea of how much yarn went into it!

Done!

I love how the green comes alive due to the hand dyeing. 

I started the lacy edge off a diagram from a website in a language that I can't even decipher; it's not Russian, it could be anything.  After the first row I winged it on my own. 

Unblocked I thought it might be too dense:
(hanging off the kitchen counter, held in place by salt & pepper, sugar pots :-D  )

It could have done with a severe block, buuuuut the "neckline" part pulled too tight.  Aaaaand I realised almost 75% of the way through that I not making the tr in the middle of the cluster, but a dc...

So.  After a light block, it came out really pretty, but I would love to see it more opened up.

I was surprised by how comfortable a triangle sits, and would love a wider one, with longer wings.  Therefor, I'm already onto V.2, with the correct cluster, and a slight modification to try and get the wings longer!  This green one is now off to Maak 'n Verskil who also runs a project with Prayer Shawls for cancer patients.  I though this would be quite fitting, as I completed  the shawl during Breast Cancer Awareness month, and the pink ties in with that, while the green would refer to my mom, a Klein Karoo girl, whom we lost to breast cancer 16 years ago.

All the while I'm thinking what I would name this shawl - it should be my Dolly shawl then.

For her :-)