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A couple of Christmases ago my friend Kristen gifted me two skeins of a very pretty purple tweed that she got on her trip to Ireland. It took me a while to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with it, but eventually I came to the realization that it was meant to be a Hawthorne. Hawthorne is a gorgeous shawl pattern from twist collective that has a shallow semi-circular shape and just looks so cozy with lace and garter stitch. Both the pattern and the yarn had been percolating around my head for a while with me not quite sure what to do with either until one day it all came together and I realized my Irish Donegal tweed was perfect for this lovely pattern.
This shawl has an interesting construction – you cast on at the lace edge, work the lace section and then use short rows to create the semicircular shape. The pattern is very well written and easy to follow, but, through no fault of the pattern, it gave me tons of trouble because I didn’t have quite enough yarn to complete the garter stitch section as written, but I wanted to use every bit of it – which means I reknitted that section, like, five times to try to get a combination that gave me enough yarn to finish, but still had the deepest garter stitch section possible. I literally had no yarn left over! After casting off, I had maybe one and a half inches to weave in!
I love this shawl, it is so cozy and the yarn softened up quite a bit after blocking. The different construction of the shawl was really fun – this was my first of the new super popular crescent shaped shawls. I really love the shape and I think it is ideal for casually looping around your neck a couple of times. Very, very pretty. Thanks for the yarn Kristen!