I *say* wrap, but really it’s a narrow blanket and it’s not doing a great job of disguising itself.

I was looking for a 40th birthday gift for a friend, and had recently made myself a Volt shawl. More on that in a future post, almost certainly, but at any rate I’d had a lovely time wearing it out and about, and had received a few compliments on it. Even though it’s over-sized and more cloak than shawl, people dig it.

I didn’t want to repeat the pattern, but I liked a lot of the elements, including the comfort of having a ton of fabric to wrap round you on a cold day, or sitting still in a chilly office. So I chose to look for crochet patterns; crochet would let me go faster than knitting, and you know a birthday gift is always on a timeline. Besides, I often have a mix of crochet and knitting projects on the go, I feel like it gives my hands a rest to be doing different movements day to day.

I went into my LYS specifically to buy yarn for this project. I shop almost exclusively online, even though I know its not as good cos you can’t see the colour or feel how soft the yarn is… but it’s convenient as heck and lets me indulge in very slow, fragmented browsing. I can take hours, if not days, over a yarn purchase. Sometimes I get distracted, sometimes I can’t decide, and sometimes I just like to add to cart.

Anyway, in this instance I went in and picked up six colours of (as it turns out, discontinued) Batik Elements (that Franklins Group link seems to have some in stock). I combined those with various shades of grey from stash and started striping.

At first, you can’t really see the grey in among the colours. Maybe using different shades gave it some camouflage? It’s like the lack of uniformity means your eye can’t land on it straight away, can’t pick it out of all the other colour business that’s going on. There should be contrast, between the plain grey and the vibrant rainbow, but somehow there is complement instead. Everyone’s just getting along.

I had intended to follow the pattern for the Zig-Zag Wrap (Ravelry) by Annelies Baes (designer’s site). I hadn’t paid attention to the suggested yarn, other than weight and yardage, so it was a coincidence that I picked out almost exactly the same one. Anyway, intentions went out the window when I a) decided I would just crochet till I ran out of yarn rather than follow the row count, b) bought fewer colours than suggested, so as not to have leftovers, which meant changing the colour changes and repeats, and c) got the pattern a bit wrong and noticed I was decreasing the centre panel by accident.

After a bit of extremely calm and rational consideration, I felt it gave more shape to the wrap, all the better to fit snugly round shoulders, so I left it in.

Between the rows and the fringe, the colours were almost completely used up, just a couple of small scraps for the scraps jar.

That last sentence was technically a lie – I bought extra skins of the reddest and purplest colours so those are still in my stash. But I wanted to highlight the potential stash-neutral nature of the project without the inconvenient truth getting in the way. If I hadn’t bought those ‘just in case’ skeins, I’d have been in stash reduction territory!

I really love all the colours in the end result, and spent much time admiring it as I went along. When finished, I soaked it for a few hours with a good squeeze of apple scented (hair) conditioner in the water, spun it in the washing machine, and steamed it carefully to even it all out. Then I bundled it up and off we went to the post office.

The recipient seemed pleased and I hope she wears it outdoors to allow for passing compliments from strangers.