“Izumi” wrap/shawl/stole thingy: begin!

What do you call these large lacy rectangles?  Are “wrap,” “shawl,” and “stole” used interchangeably?  Well, in any case, I’ve started one using the Izumi pattern by Bernadette Ambergen, and it’s for my wedding!

The decision to make one of these items for my wedding was almost last minute, so I needed to make something crocheted (a knitted item would have taken too long).  I purchased 3 skeins of Dye For Wool’s Merino/Baby Camel fingering weight yarn (55% Merino, 45% Camel) from their Etsy store in the colorway Burning Fuchsia:

It has a SLIGHT variation in color, which gives it that special hand dyed look (which is good, since it is) without taking away from delicate stitch patterns, and it perfectly matches one of the wedding colors.  I believe it took less than a week to get here, too, all the way from Germany!  Oh, and NO KNOTS!  🙂

This yarn is a super soft single ply yarn, and I’ve done a review on it (in another colorway), so click here for more details about the yarn!

The pattern isn’t as hard as it looks; it has 3 main sections (A, B, A) & a beautiful border on each end which you add last.  Here’s my progress through the first section:

I actually had to go down 2 hook sizes to get close to the gauge required (and even so it might be a little extra wide once blocked, but I’m OK with that), so that took a little trial and error, but once I got it, it started to speed along.  That might have actually been because I’m using a light fingering weight yarn instead of a lace yarn as the pattern suggests.  Oh well, I love it!  Here’s the second section:

You can see the ripple-y zig-zag-y pattern on the white background, even without blocking, and I can’t wait to get more done (it’s a fun pattern)!

I maaaaaaay have been taking it to work and crocheting in some of the groups I’m not leading, but my boss recently took up knitting and crocheting (and she’s really good!) so she agreed that it’s good to sometimes demonstrate to our clients that we as counselors need to use coping skills and have productive leisure activities, too.  Some of the clients have actually expressed interest and have asked if we could start a crafting group in the afternoons while everyone is waiting for their vans to come pick them up.  I think that would be super fun!

Well, that’s all for now.  I’ll update again soon because I’m speeding right along through this project (which is really good since I have a deadline less than 2 monthss away!).  Thanks for stopping by!