Paula's Shawl

Value Village is my favorite thrift store, and every once in a while they have a massive 50% off sale of all clothing and bed and bath items.  Guess what category yarn is in!  I have gotten so many good deals on yarn there.  The best finds are bags with enough skeins for an entire project.  Without this wonderful store, I would not be able to afford my yarn addiction.  One lucky day, I got a bag of barely opened skeins of Caron Simply Soft yarn in these colors:

Simply Soft is a lovely yarn and actually lives up to its name, being very soft.  It's also great because it is fully washable and can be blocked by just throwing it in the washer and dryer (following the laundering directions on the package, of course).  I wanted to make something with it, but had no ideas.  These are beautiful colors, but don't really fit the palette of  my wardrobe (mostly black) or any of my kids (mostly darker colors).  Then it hit me that my cousin Paula likes this sort of colors.  I was a bit worried that they might be too pastel for her, and then one day during a visit she presented in an outfit with this exact range of colors, and I knew it was fate.  Lionbrand.com had recently featured a free pattern I thought she would like, the Mother of the Bride shawl.  It was my first intermediate difficulty pattern, but I felt up to it, especially with the diagram they provided.  I find it's so much easier to complete a pattern if I have the words AND the picture of what you're supposed to do!

Using a size I crochet hook, I had just about enough yarn to finish, though had to go buy some more Orchid (readily available at Joann's) and got some Violet to use for the border as a darker color to give it shape.  It took me almost a year, working on and off, but it was a great project to cart around and work on.  People were drawn to the sheen on the Simply Soft and wanted to touch it everywhere I brought it out.  It hung in my WIP (work in progress) spot on the yarn wall, and I finished just in time for Paula's next visit.

She loved it, and it does look spectacular on her, doesn't it?