Christmas (or Not) BINGO Challenge #7

My Mom modeling the shawl for me!

With Mother's Day just around the corner, I came up with a sweet idea that would be perfect for any mom or grandma. You could even do a grandpa gift with this pattern if you chose different colors. But for this project, I'm calling this a Mother's Day Shawl.

We have a new BINGO board over at Christmas (or Not) BINGO Challenges. This time there was an opportunity for me to put down my paper and ink and to pick up my crochet hook. I chose column "I" and selected the elements "Stripes," "No Stamping," and "Monochrome." 

I love to crochet while watching TV or chatting with friends. I'm also part of a church group that crochets shawls for nursing homes, so I usually have a basket of yarn not too far away at all times.

However for this challenge, since it needed to include stripes, I found THIS NEW PATTERN. It's by one of my favorite crocheters, Mikey from The Crochet Crowd over on YouTube. He is so easy to follow that any pattern he does I feel I have a pretty good chance of being able to do it.

This pattern is called the Moss Stitch, and it's fairly easy to do. However, I do struggle with one thing with crochet, and that is keeping the number of stitches the same row after row. See the picture below for my "mistakes" and "remedies."

I love how this pattern allowed for a border all around it, which helped me straighten out the finished piece. I would ahve made the border wider, but I used up all the dark purple yarn and didn't want to buy more.

The hat is something that I always throw in because they're really easy to make, and the church likes to give a hat away with each shawl. If I don't provide one, they may pair my purple and lavender shawl with a yellow and orange hat, and I would hate that!

What I really love about this pattern is that you use two different yarns, but never have to cut the yarn to switch colors, you just leave it at one end and pick it back up after two rows of the opposite color. When you put the border on, it hides the yarn that was leftover.

Below is a picture of the yarn I used for this project.

The Mandala Ombre yarn is such a nice yarn because it's not real fuzzy. I'm thinking that this makes it not pill as much too. It comes in so many colors from darks to brights. 

The solid purple is from Caron Simply Soft. You can get just about any yarn color from that line. It is really soft, however, I sometimes find that it's harder to word with because it's not woven as tightly as others. Yet for this project the size and color were perfect, so I went with it.

On the right you can see how messed up the edges are. But I filled in the gaps with double crochets instead of singles before putting the border on. I don't thing anyone will notice!

I had just enough for the shawl, border and hat. Perfect!

One thing that I would recommend is to use lighter colors if you're new to crochet. Darker colors can be harder to see as you stitch, but they are somewhat forgiving.

No matter what you choose to do, be sure to check out our BINGO card this time over at Christmas (or not) BINGO Challenges. We are an all-crafts challenge and would love to have you play along with us!