Birthday Present for Shavay - The Shawler

The Shawler is the cutest idea I have seen in a long time! It was designed by my online friend Shelleden from Crochetville, which is a WONDERFUL online crochet community! The Shawler is part SHAWL and part sweatER. It has two variations, one has a hood and one has a collar. This one will have a hood.

The yarn I am using is Lion Brand Color Waves in a gorgeous color called Purple Vista. I had originally purchased this yarn with the intention of making The Shawler for my cousin Sue for her birthday in October, because purple is one of her favorite colors. Then I was invited to Shavay's birthday party this Saturday, and I did what I always do and thought I had gobs of time before the birthday to come up with something to make for Vay, and then suddenly the time sailed by, I looked at the calendar, and saw that I had only about 10 days to make something and I still didn't know what or out of what. So I pilfered Sue's yarn from my stash and decided to make Shavay the Shawler. I bought the yarn from Smiley's Online Yarn Sale so this is just a great excuse for me to come up with another $40 worth of yarn so that I can buy more Purple Vista to use for Sue's Shawler in October. I can ALWAYS use more yarn, right? RIGHT??? Right! That's what I thought, too!

So right now I have one half of the Shawler completed. It took me three days, but if I had worked steadily I could probably have had it done in one. Seriously. I messed around a LOT while I was working on it, most of the time was in 15 and 20 minute intervals. I think the longest stretch I worked on it at once was probably 90 minutes, and in that time I got about a third of this half done. So IF I apply myself, I MIGHT get it done by Saturday, which is when I need it for. In fact, I'm going to cut this off now so that I can go work on it for a few hours before I go to bed. It's 2:12 am, and I usually go to bed at 7 am to get up at 1 pm to be in work at 3, so in five hours I can probably put a BIG dent in that second side, and then maybe finish it up between work tomorrow and at home tomorrow night. I'm gonna give it a heck of a try, anyway. I'll let you know how it turns out and I'll post pics when I'm done. Later!