Lato - Loop on

Expression Fiber Arts is also hosting a Winter Crochet Along for the Lato Shawl, which I decided to participate in.  I am not using the recommended yarn, which is Vellum Fingering - a blend of baby alpaca, silk and yak - as sometimes alpaca bothers my hands.  Instead I am using Blossom Fingering, which is a blend of Bamboo, Merino and Tencel.  I had bought a number of skeins last year when they were hosting a crochet along and a knit along of two boomerang shaped shawls.  I dropped out of those as they were just too boring, and required lots of counting to make sure the stitch counts remained correct.  I got off on both of them and just didn’t feel like figuring it out and making it right, so they both went off to the frog pond.  

The two colors I am using so far are Passion and Inflorescence.  I’m not sure what my other two colors are going to be yet.  I will decide when I get there.  The start was a bit of a challenge, especially the row of front post single crochet.  That took me several tries and I almost gave up.  I kept losing stitches because it was easy to miss a post and thus skip a stitch.  In the end I put stitch markers every 20 stitches and did a lot of counting, but at least I only had to rip back a few stitches when I came up short on a section.  I still came up 1 stitch short, but I sneaked one in and now I can’t even see where I did that.

I did work a gauge swatch, sort of.  I only worked a couple of rows to see how it worked up and what the fabric and stitches were like and how it felt to work, then I just started, but based on the picture I think it will come out close to the given measurements in the pattern.

Pattern:  Lato by Johanna Huck

Yarn:  Expression Fiber Arts Blossom Fingering 

Hook:  3.5 mm (E)