Tendril Shawl

The pattern for this Tendril Shawl is available for free on the designer Carmen Heffernan's blog. She also provides a video tutorial that walks you through the setup rows and the first couple of pattern repeats, which is very helpful for getting this project started.

I made mine at a heavier gauge than the original pattern calls for, but it worked out well and produced a lovely shawl/wrap/scarf. My yarn is Hobby Lobby I Love This Cotton in the Emerald Pine colorway, which is labeled as a 4 weight, and I'm using a 5.5 mm hook. I had a few skeins of this colorway left over from my Dressy Swingy Shawlivest project, and I thought they would look good being worked into the Tendril Shawl design. This yarn looks and feels more like a 3 weight despite the fact that it's labeled a 4 weight, and the cotton is so soft and smooth that it's a pleasure to work with.

Finished with gothpixy's edging

I love the sawtooth edge and the beautiful lacy-ness of this shawl. The project grows quickly, which is satisfying, and the four-row repeat becomes fairly intuitive after you've worked it a few times.

Finished size

The only downside to using this particular yarn is that the skeins are pretty short at only 153 yards each, so I was worried I might not have enough yardage on hand to make a full size shawl. The first skein ran out at the beginning of row 36. 

End of first skein

The second skein ran out after making it most of the way across row 52.

End of second skein

My third skein ran out almost at the end of row 64. Thankfully, I had another skein available to finish that row and continue, because the top edge of my shawl was only about 64 inches long at that point. I used the fourth skein to work another two "points" and then do the edging row.

End of third skein

I started working the picot edging row as written in the pattern, but I felt that it was coming out too tight, so I searched through the Tendril Shawl project gallery page until I found gothpixy's project.

Gothpixy suggested an alternate way to work the picot edging that I ended up using for my project. I like their edging better for two reasons: One, it provides a lovely bumpy, wavy edging that finishes the edge really well with an easier method than working traditional picots. And two, it utilizes an extra chain stitch between each bump, so the edging doesn't tighten the edge in the same way that the original pattern's edging row was doing for me. You should check out gothpixy's project to see if maybe you might like their edging better, too!

Getting started

The designer says the finished fingering-weight samples she made measure about 70 inches (178 cm) on the long top edge after 64 rows (65 rows with the final edging applied), which is 16 "points" on the bottom edge, and 32 inches (82 cm) tall/deep on the border edge after blocking. 

I crocheted mine to 18 points, or 72 rows, plus the edging row. My shawl's total length is about 72 inches before blocking.

Alpine stitch balaclava

At least five years ago, my daughter LadyU asked me to make her a balaclava she could wear while walking the dogs during winter. It took me a long while to finally get around to making it for her, but hopefully she will like it! (There has been a bit of a long saga predating today's project.)

Inspired by the Alpine Ninja balaclava, I used the Crochet with GG video tutorial at this link to learn how to make the alpine stitch in the round (top down), but I worked the top of this hat differently than was shown in the video.

Top part of hat (above the opening for the wearer's face) is worked with a J/6mm hook; bottom part of hat (cowl) is worked with a K/6.5mm hook.

I prefer to work hats top-down, but I don't like patterns where the top stitch count increases so rapidly that the top of the hat curls ferociously until you work far enough down the sides that it helps to tame the curling a bit. That was what was happening on this one when I tried to follow the stitch counts in the video tutorial. So instead I started with 10 sts and made standard increases on that count (next row 20, next row 30, etc.).

My goal was to end up with a total of 72 sts after all the increases, but somehow I ended up with 76 sts on the last increase row; I figured that was close enough (the most important thing was to end up with an even number of sts for the alpine stitch to work). The crown is worked with alternating FPDC and BPDC sts because it's easier to do increases with that combo of sts than it is to try to do increases in the alpine stitch, and I like how the alternating FPDC/BPDC more closely resembles the texture of the alpine stitch at the crown (it looks better than making the crown with all plain DC).

I didn't actually keep count while working the crown, but I think the crown here is 22 rows in purple (the first 6 or 7 rows are alternating FPDC/BPDC increases, then I switched to alpine stitch). If you want to change colors where the balaclava splits to make the face opening, it's important to end the first color on an alpine stitch row where you're working the FPDC/DC sts. The next row is a SC row. I was beginning/ending rounds at the center back. Place stitch markers at each side of the face opening. Then on the SC row,  join your new color and SC to first marker; FSC for however many sts you need to skip to reach the next marker; at the next marker, SC normally to the end of the round. This way when you continue the following row in alpine stitch (FPDC/DC), the color change will look better because the post stitches are reaching across an SC row of the same color (rather than an SC row of a different color).

That's just the way I wanted the color change on this hat to look. It probably could look cool to do the color change over a contrasting SC row as well (so if that's the way you want to do it on your project, go for it!). I also increased the stitch count for the cowl portion to 78 for a bit more ease around the wearer's face.

It only took a few days to complete the crocheted portion of this project. The part that subsequently took months to do was searching for an acceptable pair of buttons to sew onto the folded tab as the last finishing touch. Originally I wanted to use a pair of Pokemon character buttons, but I wasn't able to find any I liked or that would be suitable here. So finally I settled on these washable coconut wood buttons, which I think look nice with the project.

Updated to add a removable 3.5-inch pom:

Granny Squared Into Highlighter Hell Throw free pattern

I found a couple more skeins of the unidentified colorway aka “Highlighter Hell” (what I call it) by Red Heart, so I decided to use it along with some plain white to make an infinite granny square throw for my daughter who loooves these (horrifically) bright colors. 😉

After trying to work this continuous granny square in full rounds of a single color, I discovered that there was not a good way to carry the next color up for the subsequent round without leaving a long loop on the reverse side where I changed colors (see below). I was afraid that the only way to “fix” this would be to add a lightweight flannel backing to cover the reverse side and hide the loops.

I pondered this problem for a while and concluded that the best way to avoid it would be to use a two-color spiral method, so I went searching for a pattern and found The Continuous 2 Color Granny Crochet Tutorial by Fiber Spider on YouTube. Ta-da!! This method is an absolutely brilliant way to work a two-color continuous granny stitch blanket without having to tie off after every single round (and have eleventy-bazillion ends to weave in when you’re done, plus all those ends would equal a lot of wasted inches of yarn), and it eliminates the big-loop-from-carrying-up-the-yarn problem I was having. Like I said: Brilliant!!

Here's a comparison of the obverse view of working the blanket in full rounds of each color (left) vs. the half-rounds used in the Fiber Spider method (right). As you can see, the different methods are undetectable to the eye, but Fiber Spider's method results in a blanket that is fully reversible and looks tidy on both sides:

I just kept working rounds on the throw until I ran out of the Highlighter Hell color. Then I used some highlighter orange yarn from my stash to work a border of one round SC followed by one round RSC or crab stitch. Finished size is about 44 inches square.

Works when they were still in progress ...