This shawl was gifted to my mum at the same time I gave my Dad his quilt, in 2010.
This mohair shawl story has two self serving components. You would be free to think that knitting a shawl for my mum would be an act of generosity. That's reasonable. However, I've two things to confess. One, I wanted to do a trial run to learn how to knit cables and two, I already owed my mother a mohair knitted something. In fact, I've owed my mother a mohair knitted something since 1988. Wow, that's a long time - 22 years. You see, way back when, I started a mohair cardigan and all through the knitting I promised it to my mother. And then, as only young people can, when it was finished, I decided I didn't want to give it to her after all. It was way too wacky for her to enjoy. I was the crazy, family knitter - thus I must have the crazy, knitted mohair cardigan. Anyway, as time passed this tale of selfish, knitting treachery passed into family folklore and while taking on the quality of a funny, mocking, self-deprecating story, it also stayed there, like a felted rock. Kind of soft and forgiven on top but hard and rocky and unforgiven underneath.
So, I needed to learn to knit cables and why not try a shawl for this practice run. You know, shawls are just a rectangle. Nothing else going on. Just cables and no shaping. Ravelry, ode to ravelry, why do I love you? easy - I need to knit a rectangle with cables in it - Ravelry what should I do - try this one.
Then I thought of the felted rock. Or rather I felt the felted rock and decided quite early in this piece to gift the knitted shawl to my mother. She saw me knitting it on a few occasions when I took it to her place. And I would tell her I'd gift it to her and we'd all laugh, but the felted rock just sat there like the rock that it was.
As mohair is super dooper expensive, I searched Ebay for a solution. I found two lots of mohair in my price range and so decided it would be pretty soft pink in the middle and dusky pink on the ends that wrap around you.
It was beautiful to knit. I found knitting cables very easy. As most of my projects take some time to finish, I was very excited when I learned about the Rainey sisters' method for marking pattern repeats. It was a method of marking out a pattern that worked particularly well if you happen to put it down and leave it for some time. You carry a piece of wool through the knitting project and this marks your pattern off. Way easier than counters and notepads etc.
You can see the lime green wool hanging off the end. Well, if you look closely, it works it way back through the whole pattern. When the project is finished you just pull out the lime green wool. Easy, peasy. I found this method worked really well. I didn't make any pattern mistakes at all once I started with this method - which is really good, because mohair is a ^*^%$ to frog. It is hairy and sticks together and doesn't want to be pulled apart. Nice and cozy and pretty but not very amphibian.
Eventually, enough hours of cabling passed and it was done. I purchased a wonderful blocking board from the internet and blocked this beauty.
I'm using blocking wires - you can just see them poking out the end. And it is so long, the shawl has run off the end and is actually pinned to the carpet! Still it worked.
There's only one significant mistake in the whole project. It happened right at the beginning before I really knew what I was doing and I didn't notice it and its right there in the bottom right hand corner. If you can't see it, that tree never fell in that forest and you heard nothing. It, of course, is crashing to earth with a resounding boom in my forest. But on another level, it isn't too noisy. Maybe there's some pine needle carpet in the forest because I would have liked to have kept this shawl, crashing tree mistake and all, but I didn't. I parcelled it up, took it to the post office in its huge, heavy duty bag and put that $12.80 stamp on it and sent it on it's way. I hope Mum liked it. But also on some level, it doesn't matter. Giving things, as I've learned, is not about how they feel but how you feel. You give because you need to express love, not because you need to be loved for your act of generosity. I felt really, really happy to give this to my mother.