I said summer was over and looks like I’m about to prove it. I’ve not been into sewing much recently. I keep trying to push myself to do it but I just can’t be bothered.I was super in to knitting for a while- I spent my whole summer just knitting and finished about 5 projects- but now I can’t even be bothered to do that.
My latest thing is being in the kitchen. Cooking, baking, generally making a mess- I want to spend every waking minute in the kitchen mixing stuff together and seeing what happens. I enjoy all of my hobbies but I go through phases where I just prefer one over the other and I don’t want to do the others. It’s like a force that takes over and I just have to do that thing- in this case, cooking.
I feel like motivation plays a big part in creativity. Sure, I can force myself to sit upstairs and sew a dress or two, my technical knowledge hasn’t left me, but they just won’t be as good as they could be without the creative energy that comes with being motivated, pumped, excited about the thing you’re about to create from your own bare hands. And so I’ve just left it. Lord knows I need more clothes now Winter’s rolling in but I don’t see the point in wasting perfectly good fabric if I won’t enjoy it. Luckily, I did knit up a storm so whilst I’m still in cooking mode I still have projects I haven’t shared with you! Today I’ve got something very different to the usual Makesphere fodder. I stated that this blog would be 90% dresses and cardigans, 9% shoes and 1% other junk. Today we’ve reached the other junk.
It’s a shawl! Never in my life had I considered knitting or even owning a shawl. I see patterns for them all the time on Ravelry but I just could never understand the reasoning behind it- why not just wear a cardigan?
It’s not the same! A shawl is like a nice warm hug which you can also wear over a cardigan by the way so no need to choose! 
This is the Oyster Shawl which I spotted in a Testing group on Ravelry. The same as sewing pattern testing, knitting designers often ask people to test their knitting patterns and who better than the people most likely to buy it? Ravelers! I really wanted to test the pattern but the deadline was quite tight anyway and considering I’d never knitted a shawl before nor such complicated lace I opted to be notified when the pattern was available to the general public.
That was a good choice. Not that I would say there’s anything particularly difficult about the pattern but you have to pay such close attention that I ripped back the lace section twice. Usually I’m a lazy knitter and if I screw up I say screw it but what are supposed to look like circles ended up being wonky triangles so I bit the bullet and did it again. It got much easier the second time round because I had an idea of where I was going and why I was doing certain things. Counting got easier because I could see which stitch it was supposed to sit on top of. I can’t even remember now why I had to rip back a second time but I can tell you that that lace section is nigh on perfect now!
I used DROPS 4ply Alpaca yarn and my goodness it’s soft. I now want to knit everything in Alpaca. It was like a cloud in my hands whilst working with it and wearing it is like a giant bear hug. Or, I suppose, Alpaca hug. This shawl went all over Wales with me on holiday. Here it is at Pembroke castle 
Even better than that- this shawl is versatile. On days where a shawl isn’t appropriate it doubles up as a scarf- a super duper warm scarf which is making me reconsider knitting scarves too. (Something I never wanted to do because straight lines are so boring yo) It can also become an excellent sun shade when you didn’t know you were visiting the beach 
Makesphere 