My Shawl Sprout

Spent the morning in a Vancouver hospital waiting for my sister Jamie to be finished with her biopsy surgery. I crocheted like mad on the Noro lace weight shawl to keep my mind from wandering off after the shades of last July when a similar home-the-same-day surgery went awry and she ended up spending a month in the hospital.

Today it was the same building just a different floor and every where I looked a color, fabric design, molding, drinking fountain.... there was something that aimed memories at me.



So I kept my eyes on my hook and yarn and before I could blink twice Jamie's voice called down the hall from the nurse propelled wheelchair telling us to meet her in the parking lot.

And I had four more rows.

Now I'm spending the night with her--a condition of her being allowed to come home was a companion for the day and night. But we didn't need that to propel us. My annual visit north is only three weeks this year and last week I was on duty caring for our mom and I have a wedding to attend Sunday for which much prep is left to do for the gift. So we've not much time to spend face to face before we're back to IM and facebook.

Jamie made dinner and afterwards she did a photo shoot of the shawl for me. She is much better at it than my having the artist's eye for it.

Oh but don't blame her for the one below. I took that the day I brought the Noro skein home months ago. My first lace weight yarn. It is variegated in colors I love. It is a blend of nylon, rayon, wool and cashmere. I'm using a steel hook size 1 as the yarn is skinnier than any other I've seen. I could go smaller to a 4 or even 6 but it isn't a consistent size. It ranges in size from the equivalent of sizes 30 to 3 cotton crochet thread. That totally bugged me at first but it's growing on me now as is the shawl itself which I was so frustrated with at the end of row 2 I was tempted to rip it out.

Even the second two rows--the first of today--were so frustrating and I several times I commented that if I continued having to take out stitches one to three times out of every five I'd have made the thing twice before I finished it once.

This one's for me. My colors and as some have said 'it's about time.'