About a month ago I found a beautiful Ice yarn, Air Baby Alpaca. It's a mix of alpaca, extrafine merino wool, viscose, and polyamide, and it's so soft. It has been made into a chain, and since I've enjoyed working with other chained yarns, I decided to try it. Plus it came in a very pretty shell pink (pink with an undertone of peach) that would look really good on my mom.
I wanted to make a shawlette for my mom - just a little something to go over her shoulders without being cumbersome or heavy. I found the Dawn in the Woods Shawl by Elaine Phillips (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/dawn-in-the-woods-shawl) which was perfect because the length.can be adjusted. I was set!
While I was working on the last third of the shawlette I realized that it wasn't going to be symmetrical. This bothered my sense of design balance (possibly a little OCD?) but my real problem was that when I tried it on it really looked "old lady-ish". My mom's style is more like Olivia's in 'Scandal', not the Victorian lacy look, so I came to the realization this would be all wrong for her. I have come up with a Plan B, but this will have to be for her birthday because I ran out of time for Mother's Day! Amazingly (or maybe not), the shawl ended up looking MUCH better on the dress form -
So instead of this shawlette, I decided to fall back on an old standby - pigs. My mom has a wonderful collection, mostly figurines, and told the family years ago to not give her any more pigs. I have chosen to completely ignore this directive. Hence, behold the sweet little piggy bookmark (pattern from Ashlea Konecny at http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/pig-bookmark) -
I also found a very unique present at Faerie Magazine that I thought my mom would like - Flying Prayer/Wish Paper (https://www.faeriemag.com/products/flying-wish-paper-mini-wishing-kit-dandelion-prayer). You write your wish on the paper, roll it up, put it on the platform card, and light it on fire. At the last moment "your wish magically lifts off the platform and rises to the heavens!". How cool is that!
Happy Mother's Day, Mom - And to all of those wonderful mothers out there! We deserve it!