FO: Perpetua Shawl

The problem with holiday weekends is that I really do lose time.  While everyone is out enjoying a three day weekend, we are open extra hours for vacationers and families enjoying their time off.  Which is no big.  It's lovely.  And I'm glad people are taking advantage of the opportunity to spend time with their kids.  But man does it make for one exhausting week of catch up.  I feel like I blinked and it was Friday.  All of which means that I did not intentionally abandon you guys this week, I just did not have the chance to do any pre-writing over the weekend and thus missed an entire week of posts.  Which I hate doing because I really missed you guys!  But you know what I did manage to do?  I finished my cousin's shawl!

I knit the Perpetua shawl from Knitscene Fall 2012 out of Unwind Company Weekend Sock as a bridal shower gift for my cousin.  This is a 400 yard 100% merino in the gorgeous colorway "Asiatic Lily" (Ravelry project page)

The pattern is stunning but as you can see I ran out of yarn at pretty much the start of the border chart.  After quite a bit of panic (it seems I am the only one this has happened to) I decided to try a bit of striping with the leftovers from my wedding shawl that Dana custom dyed for me last year.  I did two rows of the border orange, two rows undyed, two rows orange, and finished it out with the Sangria.   I was super nervous about how it would turn out, but the result has been lovely.

I cannot tell you how excited I am about this shawl.  I shared a bit as I was working on it about the cousin for whom I made it.  My aunt gave her up for adoption in college and just reconnected with her a few years ago.  I have yet to meet her myself, but we are a big clan and she has invited all of us to the wedding (yes, the wedding for which I have been obsessing over my outfit).  Her favorite color is orange and so I wanted to make her something that is in the tradition of the wedding shawl but that is also more of a personal welcome to the family hand-made gift and less of the wear once and preserve item.  I hope that by striping in yarn from my own wedding shawl that I wear all the time that she will feel she has a bit of that comfort of family to wrap around her when she feels the need.  Honestly, I am tearing up just writing this because I am so happy for my aunt, who I know has felt the absence of her daughter and who just beams any time anyone asks after her.  I cannot wait to greet her in the manner that is becoming customary among the women in our family -- with a hug, a kiss, and a handmade gift.

To see more FOs, check out the gang over at Tami's Amis!