My new knitting rule is gifts are for birthdays and only for the most special and thankful of people. This is the first of the two Sister Shawls I’m making for my sister and me. I will be tucking it away for her birthday while I write up the story that goes with it and finish knitting mine. I have to block it in sections because these are all my blocking mats in action. And all my blocking pins. For the moment, anyway.
I have to be honest. I’m pretty stoked about this shawl. I have been working on it since July and each section represents a piece of our camping trip together and our journey as sisters. I’m so excited to have nearly finished it.
This is the final section and the pattern is called lacy stars. I’d like to think it looks like a night sky filled with stars. Sleeping in a tent, under the stars, was absolutely wonderful. I separated the lacy sections with cable sections to represent our ancestry and how we are linked as a family.
I had a little trouble with this leaf section in the beginning, but quickly got the hang of it. Our campsite was beneath a canopy of leaves. The girls played with leaves and made leaf boats. My sister wrote out a scavenger hunt list for them and my girls worked together to find all the items. This included differently shaped leaves. There were also a lot of inch worms. The girls really enjoyed getting them onto a leaf and putting them back towards the trees. Or watching them crawl across their hands.
And into the final stretch of blocking! This section of blue is one of those sand patterns. It made me think of our trips to the beach almost every day while we were camping. My sister and I got to have some nice conversations standing in the water, soaking up the sun. We watched the next generation of sisters play and explore in the water with Oma close by.
The very first section is a pebble stitch and made me think of the gravel road we drove in on and camped alongside. And the day my sister let me drive the two of us into town for a few things. My sister hates my driving. I just have a different style. I drive more like my mother than I care to admit, but seriously, having kids does something to your brain! And when you’re typically the driver, it’s hard to be the front passenger. That’s why I tend to knit in the car. Anyway, I think her disapproval of my driving style has now become a running joke with her. On the way back in, we stopped to fill the giant water jugs our step-dad brought for us all to use from one the spigots. We had to hold the jugs up because of how the water came out. It was hilarious.
The Accidental Domestic Goddess 