We got invited to this hollywood style beach wedding in Mexico, and I thought immediately of two things – what am I going to wear and Zika virus. Most people never even realise they got infected by Zika and eventually experience just a slight fever, www claims. Ok, that´s that. So, what am I going to wear?
I did not have the slightest idea, but I remembered a lace shawl I started to crochet one year ago. A beach wedding was an inspiration strong enough to sharpen my needle!
I discovered this lovely shawl crochet pattern from ROWAN – and adjusted it to fit my eclectic mind better. I would die having to crochet 78 white flowers, so I just used the yarn I had and mixed all the colours together.
“Ahmm. You are not bad with form, but I have a feeling you lack the basics in color theory” – my design trained b-friend snitched lovingly. Enough for me to whistle off “F-off”. Stay true to your craziness. Even if it is just a visual one.
You will need to crochet (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + …. ) X flowers, where X marks the number of rows. This basically means that every row will increase for one flower. If you crochet 78 flowers – this will make 12 rows. I cheated for one whole row – it took me ages anyway – so I needed 66 flowers for 11 rows. Pheeew! That was a lot.
You need to count in a serious time lapse for this shawl – several weeks or something, depending on your motivation. Even if you throw yourself on relentless crocheting 8-hours a day, I believe you might need more than 10 days to finish it. Seriously. It took me a couple of months to finish this peace and I had some flowers done from the previous attempt!
Here is what you´ll need:
- 1.5 mm crochet hook
- 6 hanks of ITO Gima 8.5 yarn
- 2 hanks of ITO Sensai yarn
- a threading needle and scissors to tuck in and cut off the rest yarn
You can let your mind go wild about the colours and materials: I mixed cotton with silk and mohair and got this spring look, but you can go for mohair based yarn only, or wherever your heart leads you.
Don´t forget to block! Otherwise it will look shrivelled. Just sprinkle with water and lay to rest on a flat surface over night, like in the photo. No big deal for some seriously done effect.
blocking
HAVE FUN! You deserved it.
p.s. this was not my wedding outfit, but the lace shawl was finished – awl.
p.p.s. I left the inner holes unfilled for a more punky look. I love leaving things “unfinished” if they look finished, if you know what I mean. Love it. It breaths life into things. And life is there to breath in. OOOOOM.
