The Rapture Shawl. It’s Here!!

My latest crochet shawl design has been released into the wild!! Hurray! It’s doozy too. Have you seen crochet brioche yet? I am completely in love with it!

Over the last few months Rapture has made appearances on the YouTube podcast but I don’t think I’ve made mention of it here. Do you like it?! It has been such a total joy to work on but the relief that I’m at publication point is huge!

To get yourself a copy go HERE to Ravelry!

Want to know more about Rapture? Read on…

I started making it in March after I’d been to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival. Three of the skeins I used came from yarn I picked up there. I knew that they’d be a crescent shawl when I saw them together, I just knew! Rapture is the second in a possible trilogy of shawls that use a snazzy brioche style border (The first shawl is One Way of Another, which was featured in issue 102 of Inside Crochet magazine and soon to be released on Ravelry – see the bottom of this post for a pic. As for the third shawl? I might try swatching for that tonight… I hope my idea works… Can you guess it’s name?).

Brioche is huge in knitting right now and I can see why, it looks amazing. I love the colour-play that can be achieved, and I love that it lays perpendicular to other rows of stitches. And whilst it’s everywhere in knitting it’s not every where in crochet. Yet. However, over the last year or so I have seen it creeping into creative designer’s work.

There are a couple of different ways you can achieve the look but mostly it’s a form of interlocking crochet. Check out Addydae Designs squishy socks, Miss Neriss’ fab hat,  Mamachee’s cute cowl, or have a look at this selection on Ravelry (I typed in brioche crochet and these are the ones that came up!).

Once I’d made it, it took a while to write up the instructions. It was a mammoth task; the border required a lot of working out. Don’t worry though, it’s pretty *easy to crochet up, just a bugger to write down! It’s been through rigorous tech editing [big thanks to Deb from Find me Knitting] and testing too [thanks testing crew!!], I didn’t want any mistakes creeping through.

I have tried my absolute best to cover all bases. There is a chart where I think it’s useful to have a chart, a table of stitch counts & colour changes, and for the border I have made a video tutorial as I think it’s sometimes easier to show you how it’s done rather than make you read all the text (although that text is super important, you do need to read it!! Haha!).

* It is quite easy but this shawl is probably suited to a confident intermediate crocheter.

For this pattern, I want you to have a fun and relaxing time whilst you create your shawl. As such, there aren’t many places where you have to count out stitches. Once the set up rows are done, the main body of the shawl can be done in a fairly free way. Once you’ve set up the first row of the edging, there’s really very little counting you need to do. Mind you, if you’re a stickler for a stitch count, it’s there for you to follow.

Anything else I need to tell you? Hmm, I don’t think so but please get in touch if you have any questions, I’ve love to hear from you. And once you’ve made yours, please add it to Ravelry, I would very much appreciate it. There’s always Instagram too… #zeensandroger

Thanks!! xxx

xxx