This side-to-side shawl is made using 520 yards of Lion Brand Mandala yarn - shown is color “Spirit.” It can be made is a variety of sizes but is a shallow depth shawl.

It is a part of the ebook “Crazy Stitch Slides.”
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Crocheting in Wonderland

Things do not always turn out as planned. For me, they rarely do. More often, I watch as my plans are revealed to be but naïve presumptions, and I face a puzzlement of my own unwitting invention. But I have learned to prefer it that way. For there is nothing worse than boredom, the tedium of seeing that same road ahead of me that I have just traveled and to know there is nothing new and exciting around the bend. I now prefer to struggle with an unknown future.

This shawl was a perfect example. I thought I knew where I was going, but instead as it took form, I found that I had a wriggly, living creature writhing in my lap – it took the shape it wanted, which was NOT what I expected, but I loved it for knowing what it wanted to be. Yes, I do love those Bad Boys…

Even when I found a tiny mistake I had made two days before and my conscience guilted me to frog back and rework it. And that night when we struggled mightily about the decreasing in the second half - but we finally came to agreement, the Subterranean Creature and I.

Not that I sometimes do not give up. In fact, probably half the time my lovely new design proves to be a sad mistake, and I throw it far across the room, screaming in disgust (DH comes in to see what is wrong, then leaves the room, shaking his head). I long to stomp on it until I am sure it is truly dead, but fear that might bring retribution in the form of nightmarish hauntings.

For I do dream of crocheting. Restless thoughts wake me in the deep of night, spinning webs of dreamlike fancies, of untried and untested stitch designs, increases and decreases in strange, wondrous forms, and of colors in as yet unseen hues. I feel there is something alive in the twisting and turning of the stitches, and the infinite possibilities of the patterns. And I wish for the time to explore them all…