Shawls for Little Friends

Things have greened up around here, thanks to early May showers. Our April showers were remiss, only visiting us once or twice. So we have been very thankful for our early May rains. Our hardy Red Bud tree is beautifully in bud and all the mighty oaks are budding out, as well. And my husband has a lot of his garden planting finished.

The hardy Red Buds. These grow wild in the woods where
my parents and sister live. Up here in the north, we
must purchase "hardy" hybrids of them.

Green, green, green.
A feast to the eyes after a long winter.

Bleeding Heart plant

I am busy, busy, busy getting ready for another garage sale, along with several other families in our neighborhood. Every time I have one, I say that I'm never having another one. And after a couple of years, and more piles of unused things, I plow forward and have another. It will soon be over and when it is, I will be glad. And I'm never having another one!

As well as working on the sale, I have been busy knitting socially. I've been greatly enjoying the company of new friends (that are quickly becoming old friends) and have finished another shawl. If you follow my ramblings, you might remember this post, in which I talked of doing two shawls for 2 little friends of mine. They are sisters and their birthdays are ONE day apart. You can read about how I came to the decision to knit shawls for them at the link above.

The shawls I've finished are from a free Ravelry.com pattern called Lala's Simple Shawl. It is a very nice shawl, easy to make and is not super "hole-y" or lacy (from yarn-overs) so is a substantial wrap against cool air and drafts.

The older of the two sisters will get the pink - and larger - one. I made it with Kraemer Yarn, Perfection Tapas in the color Bubble Gum. She loves pink. The smaller and slighter sister will get the green one. That yarn is Plymouth Yarn, Jelli Beenz, in the color Lime.

The birthdays are not until June so I cannot post pictures yet of the wee recipients in their gifts but I can show you the shawls themselves.

I had searched and searched for a nice grown-up looking shawl for girls and could not find what I was looking for. So when I found Lala's Simple Shawl, and saw it made up at a local yarn shop, I decided to just do less repeats to make it girl size.The picture on the pattern showed six repeats so I stopped at 5. And the green yarn is a small worsted so I determined to make the larger one with size 9 needles and the smaller one with size 8 needles. I think that all worked very well, giving the desired effect. Furthermore, I have an extra skein of each yarn and will give those to their mother so that when they get bigger, as little girls are wont to do, she, who is a knitter also, can add another round of pattern repeats to the gifts.

I'm eager to give them their shawls. And eager to see whether the knitted gifts survive active, lively childhoods.