Waffle Love Shawl

Waffle Love Shawl by Joy Renee

H/T Fiber Spider YouTube tutorial for waffle stitch triangle
H/T Jayda Instiches YouTube tutorial for granny square hearts
Used 2 skeins Lion Brand Ice Cream Cotton Candy for Waffle Triangle and Caron Simply Soft for hearts and white boarder

I kept intending to get pictures of the boarder creating process but kept waiting until I was sure I was on the right track and that sureness never coalesced.  My process when I'm not following a pattern is something hit-and-miss that I call sculpting.  It involves a lot of frogging after experimenting. I will attempt to describe in words what finally worked:

After I was sure I had the right number of hearts per side I established how many stitches there were between the bottom tips when lined up with edges at the widest spot touching. 

Then I started a chain and attached to the top crevasses of each heart with a half-double and chained nine in between.

At the end of the row I chained 18 and then attached to the bottom point of the last heart in line with a single crochet and chained nine in between each again.

I completed the circle with another eighteen chains and joined where I began.  Then I went around the circle with half-doubles wrapped around the chain.  I did this by feel as one to one with the number of chains was too sparse but it seemed to average five or six half-doubles for every four chains between the hearts but choice was always affected by the double crochet that dips down to join the two hearts at the half way point between the crevasses. 

For the  18 chain loops at each end of the chain of hearts I crowded more half-doubles in per chain in order to create the right number of stitches so that joining them at the corners would not cause too much bunching up.  I never could get it to lay completely flat but finally decided i more than half liked the slight ripple effect anyway.

I made this for my MIL who was in hospital in March when I started it.  Her birthday was at the end of April and Mother's Day was mid May and I missed them all and now temps where she lives in Southern Oregon are probably in the 90s.  Sigh. Still, I hope to get this in the mail this week.

I'm thinking of making one for myself in shades of blue and I'm also liking the idea of all red hearts with all white boarder and waffle.  Or a reds and pinks variegated waffle with red and pink hearts and white boarder.  Oh no.  I need to stop visualizing them.  I already have too many projects on the hook.  As in I wouldn't be surprised to find they topped triple digits if I took the time to sort them all out and count them.