Crochet Shawl for Mother’s Day

When your parents reach a certain age it becomes more difficult to find gift items for their special occasions. I don’t really like to give money, but sometimes that is what works best. If I can, lately I will try to make something unique for them  like I did last year for mother’s day and my dad’s birthday. Since I had already done the machine embroidery thing I decided that this year for Mother’s Day I would use my new hooking (crochet) skills to create something special for my mom.

I’ve been following a few crocheters blogs and one of them, Teresa Kasner, made a beautiful shawl that looked like one I might be able to tackle. The pattern is available on Ravelry for a small fee so you couldn’t see the pattern before purchasing it. I like to see a pattern before I download it (many are free) so I can see if I think it is one I could manage. This one had a fairly low difficulty rating so I took the plunge and purchased the “Ruby” pattern by Anastasia Roberts.

I decided to use the same yarn that Teresa used in her shawl so I took a trip to Joann’s to see what they had. The yarn is a sock weight from Deborah Norville called Serenity Garden. As soon as I saw the hibiscus color I knew that was the one for mom. Red is the most popular color she wears. I also liked this yarn because it is soft, made of Dralon Microfiber and is fairly light weight.

 

I wanted to make sure the shawl was big enough so she could really wrap herself in it. The pattern starts at the top edge and you keep adding rows that get bigger and bigger. The nice thing is you can make as many sets of those rows as you need for the desired size.

 

The shawl finishes off with a more lace like pattern.

 

This section was a bit challenging and I also determined that the pattern wasn’t written correctly on one of the rows, but I was able to make an adjustment that worked perfectly.

 

I blocked the shawl on our spare queen sized bed and you can see that one side is as long as the bed is wide. I probably could have done without a few of those rows, but I wasn’t sure how large the lace border would turn out. I figured that more was better in this case.

 

The day I gave my mom the shawl she of course was wearing an outfit that the shawl worked perfectly with. I think you can tell that not only was she surprised, but very happy with the finished product.