The Crocheted Gray Granny Square Shawl

Almost a year ago my father’s mother passed away. I have her photo on the shelf, and plenty of her “stuff”. Using some wool found in her stash, I crocheted a granny square shawl for myself. I love it and I’m so happy we finally got snow before New Year’s so I could enjoy it properly!

I still miss my granny, especially on Christmas. This was our first Christmas without her and I felt like something was missing, liked we’d forgotten something. But she is not here, nobody forgot to call her or pick her up. She is gone from earth, though I haven’t forgotten. She is in my heart always and forever…

And I still have boxes packed with little things from her life. I haven’t taken the time to go through it all, though some of the things have been used (like the two wine glasses with pink dragonflies) or displayed every day since I took them home. I have some unfinished embroidery pieces in a box that I want to look through, and most of her neatly filled calendars – but so far all I have really used is three skeins of wool yarn that we found in one of her boxes. I doubt she’d knitted anything much since I was born, because I have never seen her knit or crochet, but just like me she had a hard time throwing useful things away. There was a big load of yarns in the kitchen sofa, but I tried not to take too much.

It’s too easy to “take care of” free material in my opinion. I do it way too often. But then you’ve got to house it, sort it, and use it somehow. Or get rid of it again, and like I said, that’s one of my problems. I can not throw useful material away, and sometimes I find it hard even to donate it to thrift shops, especially if I have an idea or plan of how I myself could to use it.

Though with the gray yarn I knew what I wanted to make as soon as I saw it. A granny shawl, inspired by something I once saw my friend Ann S working on, using the granny square method but in rows. I just loved how the gray looked in her hands, and I have been dreaming of doing something similar for myself since then.

So this summer I crocheted myself a granny shawl, from my grandmothers wool yarn.

Yes, I started in the middle of summer with this warm wintery project, but at least it was ready to be used when winter came.

I started at the triangle’s tip, and then increased on one side every row until all the yarn was used up. Then I added a neon pink border, something I doubt you’d ever find in my grandmothers stash, but that I love having in mine. For me, it was the perfect finishing touch. All that lovely neutral gray, in different hues as it turned out, and then my favorite color surrounding it.

Yum!

I used it for the first time in November, when mom and I was selling at a cozy and small Christmas Garden Market. And it was the perfect accessoire to bundle up in. I hardly need a cap when it’s cold, because this shawl wraps twice around my neck and covers the ears.

This is the kind of project that I love making. It’s enjoyable from the start, from making the skeins into yarn balls so that I could use them, to crocheting which is something I love doing, to finishing the neon border and wearing it out, feeling its warming touch, a little itchy but not too much.

It’s the kind of project that is very iHanna, made out of found material, in this case inherited wool, with the idea of giving it new life and a purpose, adding a dash of neon pink. I love my shawl, because it warms me in more than one way.

Edit/update: If you want to make something similar, the crochet pattern is like the Vintage Vertical Stripe Crocheted Blanket Pattern but with increases in one end each time you turn. I kind of followed this pattern in Swedish: virka en enkel sjal, if you know how to crochet you can maybe get some guidens by looking at the images. Good luck!