a good excuse

I haven't been blogging much lately, but I have had a good excuse.  I have been working on a gift for my Mama.  I would have loved to have finished it by her birthday, but it came and went a couple of weeks ago and I have just finished the gift tonight.  I think I am happy with it, though I am tired of looking at it, but most of all, I think she is going to like it and isn't that what matters?

So, for those of you who haven't seen this yet ... I have been crocheting like a crazy woman for 2 weeks to finish this:  the pattern name is Simply Shawl by Caron - which is the brand of yarn I used.  I think it turned out pretty good, except that it is a little smaller than I pictured it to be.  What I liked about the pattern is that the rows in the body of the shawl are identical from row 2-98.  This made it easier since I didn't have to keep looking at the pattern to see what to do next.

I really struggled with the decorative stitches that make up the two outside rows of the border.  I had never heard of the stitches before I started this project, so I had to learn how to do them ... the tall ones are called double treble stitches and they are very hard to keep going correctly, at least for a beginner like me.  The smaller stitches on the outside edge are called picot stitches and they are relatively easy to make, but much harder to keep even.

I had thought that since I couldn't give this to Mama for her birthday that I would save it for Christmas, but I'm not.  I plan to give it to her tomorrow, if I can get to her house.  The weather we are having now is much more suited to this kind of shawl than it will be after Christmas, so I just can't see waiting.  Besides, I don't think that I would be able to keep it to myself for that long.