Fiber Fest Shawl Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is enjoying their spring! We've had a lot of melting here (and another foot of snow) and still have a couple of feet of snow on the ground. We're supposed to get a little more on Sunday night, but then next week looks beautiful! I look forward to seeing some bare ground sometime!

I was able to finish and block my Fiber Fest Shawl designed by Stephen West. I don't have a good place to take a picture of a finished shawl, but here you can at least see the whole thing and the shape of the shawl:

Fiber Fest Shawl

I love the colors, but think I would like it more if there was less white mixed in with the blue. It dulls the blue and kind of dulls the green on top of the blue. Here are some close-ups to give you a better idea of how the colors look:

Fiber Fest Shawl - body

Fiber Fest Shawl - main pattern

Fiber Fest Shawl - border

I love how this turned out! I really love how the stitch pattern of the final border makes such sharp points. I did a simple blocking without pins, so those points really created themselves. One thing I don't really like is how the center lines in the brioche part of the border (the purple and green part) bow out. I think it would look better if those were straight, but that's a minor detail. I'm guessing that I probably needed to make those stitches tighter. I haven't done a lot of brioche so I'm still figuring out how tight I need to do things.

I also received my March shipment for the Jimmy Beans Wool Blanket Club. I'm making the crochet version of the blanket, which is the Wildflower Crochet Blanket designed by Lena Skvagerson. This blanket is constructed as individual squares that are then connected in the end to make the blanket. Here are the squares for March:

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 7

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 8

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - block 9

Wildflower Crochet Blanket - March center block progress

The fist block (block 7) is the first time I've crocheted a block from corner to corner, diagonally. I had to use a lot of stitch markers so I would recognize where I needed to work into the stitches, but it was pretty easy to do with that help. The second block (block 8) is probably my least favorite block for the blanket so far. It would be a good learning block if I hadn't done last year's blanket which was just variations of this pattern, but it's a bit awkward to put a wavy pattern in a square block and putting the border around the block caused some holes to appear along the right side of the block. The third block (block 9) is a variation on the Granny Square. I had to start this block over a couple of times because I wasn't reading the instructions carefully for some reason, but it was easy once I paid attention. I like how the center block is coming along. 

Grace has been having fun playing in the snow. Here she is playing in the snow on our walk on Monday, after the most recent foot of snow:

Grace on her walk

She loves to play in the snow! We usually go out in the yard in the afternoon to play a little soccer:

Grace playing soccer in the yard

It was in the mid-40s today, so Buttercup went out for the first time since we got all of the snow:

Buttercup enjoying the day

She enjoyed finding little water puddles to drink from and watching us play soccer!

March Madness continue today with the first half of the Elite Eight. Unfortunately, the University of Kansas didn't do well and they are no longer in the tournament. But I can still enjoy some very good college basketball! And if I don't get another post written before then, I hope that everyone enjoys the ecclipse! We're just going to stay home and enjoy our smaller part of it.

Nancy