Jane's Journal

In November I cast on the Eriginea shawl, which is a crochet project and it had been patiently waiting for me to muster enough courage to start. After all, I'm an avid knitter but I only dabble in crochet. I still have to look up in which terminology a double crochet is actually a treble crochet because the US or UK people made a mess of it all. I bought the yarn at a Knit & Knot with my friends for € 22,50.
The colour scheme was perfect for my palette and I started using the skein from the centre, at the lighter shade of purple.


Nov 27: in-progress project-page photograph.

The shawl itself is made up of three distinctly different patterns. There's the shell-part, which looks irregular and star-bursty. The shells are wedged in between more 'solid' rows of (double) crochet that are quite dense. And finally there's a border with puffy voluminous stitches that make a lacy, scalloped border at the edge.

Once I got to the border, I was a little baffled. The purple colour had cycled through darker shades and I was still waiting to see the first of the blue in the thread I was working with by the time I started working on the border. Luckily I have two very experienced crocheters on Whatsapp to consult.
I frogged back to the final bit of sea-shells and added an extra row of shells. By the time I got around to the border this time, I had 5 centimeters of blue in my shawl in the final row.
But by the time the border was finished -- and thus, the shawl as well -- I had a lot of yarn left. The blue was just a blip in the border and the biggest part of the shawl was a pale vomit purple.

It was January 17 and I decided to frog the entire shawl and start over. But first, I made a little slip-knot right at the end and secured it with a little plastic marker, so I could still see how much of the yarn I had left over.
It's rather disheartening to see two months of intermittent work being ripped out in less than 30 minutes. I wound the rippling yarn around my hand in such a way that I could still reach the start of my skein. The blue was all the way on the inside, and the lightest purple where I had started all the way on the outside. It made for a weird little bird's nest, with the blue tail of the yarn poking out of the centre.

Then I proceeded to cut off as much yarn from the light purple end of the yarn as I had left over at the blue end. This way, there would be far less light purple in the shawl, and some more blue. I hoped it would look better, as I really didn't like the light purple that much.
And then I rewound everything into a neat little ball, trapping the blue on the inside of the skein. This took the better part of an hour.

The best revelation of the entire project is that triangular shawls that start in the centre always get weird colour gradients. With self-striping yarn you can see it best. The first rows are a LOT shorter than the rows later on in the project. So if you start with a light purple, it will take a lot of rows before the colour changes to darker purple, unless you cut off a significant bit first.
The first colour change in my gradient yarn came much more quickly the second time around, and then the second and third followed soon enough. I could see that the shawl would definitely look much darker now, but it was still a ways to go.

By the time I got to the border, all the progress I had thought to make in the colour changes had happened at the heart of the shawl. At the very edge, the only difference I could see was that my blue shade started roughly ⅓ of a row earlier than the second time around, with the extra row of shells at the end of the last shell section.
Initially I wanted to leave the extra row of shells out, as it was an insurance policy just in case I wound up crocheting more loosely (and using more yarn) than the first time around. As I don't crochet very often, my 'crochet hand' is not settled yet, so how loose or how tight my stitches are depends mostly on my mood and my stress levels.

But I figured I could always alter the border slightly should I run out of yarn. I frogged back a bit to the final row of shells, added the extra row of shells, then did the final rows of dense (double) crochets and set to work on the border. Thankfully, the puffed stitches are a lot easier once you practice them a lot.
It all sounds perfectly simple, but by this time a single row of crocheting takes roughly an hour or so, depending on the density of the crochet.

Once I finished the border pattern, I still had 24 grams left....most of it blue and only a wee bit of light purple.
But the best part is that I enjoyed how the project had turned out a lot more! The rapid switch from the ugly light purple made the entire shawl look a lot more saturated, and now the blue is no longer an afterthought in the shawl. With ~90% of the 250 grams used, I am quite pleased.

I didn't even take the time to block this, and wore it to work straight away and used the pictures on Instagram to promote the Knitwear section in my Etsy store. Having to only weave in two tails was a bonus, and it matches a lot of my outfits because it's perfect for my palette. Today I wore it with my Horribly Itchy First Cardigan Ever That Is Pilling Like Crazy.



Erigineia is a free pattern by Silke Terhorst. It has taught me the joy of reading crochet charts and how to use a skein of yarn wisely.
Although some might say I was too perfectionistic about this project, I am very glad I took the time to re-do the entire thing.
Find more information on the Ravelry Project Page. Please note that although I could very nearly make do with 800 meters for this shawl, it depends on your 'crochet-hand' -- how tight your stitches are. You could go down half a needle size but the tighter gauge makes the shawl drape less beautifully.

I hope to wear this beauty often! It certainly was more than enough work to get it done but in truth -- I loved it all!

I've done a couple of Project Lists before, and this particular instance was sparked by a topic on Ravelry, asking what projects you'd like to work on in the coming year. I've merged my old project list with my New Year Knitting Resolutions, and here it is.

( As usual, new or edited items are in colour.  )

A lot, and I really do mean A LOT of blue items on that list. Mostly because (unlike my sewing projects) I actually get around to doing what's on the list. Still, it's impressive to see what I've achieved since I last made such a list in June. Three unplanned projects cast on and finished, three extra pairs of socks from a general cry of "I want to knit more socks!" and a fourth in the making.
I've noticed that I love knitting socks, but scarves and shawls and other large projects are not things I pick up easily. Maybe they're too bulky, maybe they require too much concentration, I don't know. I've decided not to push myself too much and just work on one concentrated thing at a time. I'm currently working on the commissions for Steelweaver at home and taking Eisirt's socks along to Christmas dinners as a relaxed no-thinking-required project. Once I'm done for Steelweaver, I'll continue on the Muness for Sigunne and after that, start on the next commission or my Batik shawl (it would be nice to have a shawl to wear with my new winter coat before it actually gets cold).

Other than this knitting list, I've also got a few nice events planned. There's Wol in de Wei with Tyldak and wannabe_bitch somewhere this year, and I might visit the Handwerkdagen (Crafty days) in February/March. At the end of the year anemoona and I will visit the Knit & Crochet days again, so that will be fun as well. And in March we also celebrate the first anniversary of the Ikea knitting breakfast (ont-breit)!
So in short, many beautiful things to try my needles at, many things to look forward to as well. I hope to focus on some sewing projects in the coming days, perhaps an updated project list for sewing projects will be coming up later.