Baroque Golden Flutter Shawl

Whew, talk about drama. This piece took me from here to there and back. I was frustrated with it almost as much as I was delighted by it. After completing the Austen Flutter Shawl I decided that there was so much with this format that I hadn't tried. The Austen Shawl alternates with big and little holes, meaning more or fewer stitches before attaching. What if I didn't do a nice gradual progression, but instead dramatically changed the stitch ratios suddenly! What if it got really tiny and very frequent? There are parts of this shawl that appear to be solid, but are actually very small stitch counts of 1 and 3. Then, for the drama, it gathers up tight, then releases with counts of 7 and 9 and back down again at the very bottom with counts of 3. Maybe I'm the only one that will know what I'm talking about here... I created a problem. I tried to make the shawl defy gravity and it slumped. It sagged. I had to fix it.

Here, you can see what I did. I gathered the point of greatest contrast - where that tiny tight point meets the big expansive stitch - and crocheted them together from the back. Okay, that's good. But it still looks like a lump from the front. So I stitched the front 1/5th of each side into place forming closed pockets. I crocheted over that 1/5 section so often I made it stiff with yarn, now making the piece more structured. Not slumpy. In fact that entire fold has become a ridge and gives the whole piece its backbone. 

So I call it Baroque because it is dramatic; it is bold in its attempt to defy or challenge nature's gravity, it is a decadent pale golden hue, it is delightfully soft to the touch, and it wraps the wearer in a kind of theatre in which you are center. My t-shirt and khakis don't do it justice.