A crochet update

There was a lot of good football this past weekend and we had friends over both days to watch the games. that means that I did a mot more crochet than quilting. I was able to get this project done! This is a pretty big cape and that's what I was going for. I have to be careful and not make all of my donation shawls and capes in essentially child size to fit me. (Yes, I do shop sometimes in the boys department. It's a good place for short people.) Anyway, back to the shawl. The yarn is Mandala Tweed and I used 2 cakes of it. It's 100% acrylic and I used a J hook. The pattern was from Etsy.

It's a fine pattern and I think this style is perfect for a wheelchair shawl but the yoke is all back loop single crochet and it took FOREVER! I also think that this pattern has some math errors on the increase rows but we'll assume operator error for now. The yoke has all of the increases and once you start the shell pattern it's straight and goes really fast. I stitched until I ran out of yarn because I don't like leftovers. I am thinking that I might try to recalculate the pattern increases and rows using half double crochet so it will go faster. One the yoke is set you can do almost anything for the lower half.

Here are a couple of close ups of the buttons and stitches. I love the buttons with this yarn . I have a pretty phenomenal button collection that I was glad to finally use again.

The big blanket is coming along really well too. I think I have enough yarn to do 3 more white sections and then it will be about 60" long. This is turning into a surprisingly nice blanket!

You will notice that there isn't an update on the dark blue duster. That project is not working out well. The dark speckled yarn with the fancy stitches isn't a good combo and it's just annoying to work on. I've found a couple of other patterns that I think might work better but I'm also pondering skipping to a summer top pattern for my first garment and work on the duster in the summer. By the time I would get the duster done it would be time to put it away.

But I can only work on the heavy blanket for so long before my hands get fatigued so I pulled out this yarn that I bought on clearance in June (for $1.24/skein!) and started a corner to corner. I have 7 skeins so I will either do 2 wheelchair blankets or one dialysis/chemo blanket. This yarn is so soft and easy to work with and I like how it's looking in corner-to-corner.