Three balls of Schoppen-Wolle yarn + one 4 mm crochet hook + one London Olympics = crocheted shawl in a record breaking three days! Ta-daaaaah!

I soooo loved making this shawl. I honestly couldn’t stop hooking! The pattern is really easy to get your head around & remember, and of course the yarn… the gloriously colourful variegated 4-ply yarn which I bought at the Schoppen-Wolle factory!!!

It was a constant struggle to get me to put down the crochet hook.

Conversations in my head went something like this:
“I’ll just hook until the end of the red.” Reach the end of red.
“Maybe just keep going until the end of pink.” Reached the end of pink.
“Oooh, it’s going white!” Reached the end of white.
“I’m halfway through the row so I might as well keep going to the end of the row”. In the last shell of the row, white starts turning blue.
“Oooh, blue! So pretty! The blue will probably zing against the red of the previous row. I’ve just have to see this!”

You get the idea.

I also didn’t have just one shade of variegated yarn, I had two! I took my queues from the yarn as to where to stop using shade Parrot  and join shade Spring Has Come. Some sections of Parrot was too orange and/or mustard for me, so I just cut those out. (I have no hang-ups when it comes to customizing a pattern, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I will customize my yarn to suit either).

The five hdc rows I did in the solid turquoise. This was a 6-ply yarn, so I upped to a 4.5mm hook for these rows.

I used more of Parrot than of Spring Has Come, as Parrot has the shades of blue and green that I love, although slightly different hues to Spring Has Come. The very last row, done as two groups of two trebles joined by a picot, of the shawl I did in Spring Has Come.

Speaking of the edging row. I just have to show you the amazing difference wet blocking makes. In this photo everything on the blue blocking board is still unpinned.  The edge doesn’t look nearly as nice pre-blocking and even the shell rows open up once blocked.  

Isn’t it amazing? Blocking really opens up the patterns and shows off your hard work so much better. It also made my shawl almost double in size. Never under-estimate the importance of blocking!

The nitty gritty of my Childhood Memories shawl:

• The pattern is designed by Gabriele Ordenes and it’s called Recuerdos de infancia (which translated to Childhood Memories). You can buy the pattern here or here.
• The yarn I used was Crazy Zauberball in shades 1701 (Parrot) & 2136 (Spring Has Come) and Admiral Starck 6 in shade 4780 (Turquoise).
• 4 mm crochet hook for the Zauberball rows and 4.5mm for the Admiral Starck rows.

This shawl is not end of variegated sock yarn obsession. No sirree. I have enough left over to crochet….. wait for it ……socks! You would think this is the logical use for sock yarn, but us crocheters don’t do socks much – I’m going to change that. Knitters make the most beautiful stripey socks and I want a piece of that action.

I don’t think I’ll wear my socks and shawl together though. That may be a bit much. Then again….. what’s wrong with having too much?!