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Otters love to crochet...SHAWLS!

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This was a pattern from a knitting book that knitters would do in two halves, interweave the strips, then knit the ends together. Geez, I thought, you could just weave it as you crochet it. That's easy!

Well, after doing it wrong and ripping it completely out three seperate times, I'm here to tell you it's NOT as easy as it looks, but it's really beautiful and worth the trouble. I'll give as detailed instructions as I can, but basically you've just got to dive in and do your best, and don't get discouraged if you have to rip it out a couple of times.

I used TLC Heathers in Purple Haze, and really loved it. Not only a pretty color and works well, but after washing it's soft and wonderful. I used 2 1/2 skeins of it making this, but one of my false starts was so awful I didn't even undo it, just got rid of it. I'd still recommend getting three skeins just to be sure, if you're using this.

I'll give the finished measurements of this shawl, but basically I just chained and kept wrapping it around my shoulders about halfway between my shoulder and elbow until it was long enough to go around, cross, and hang down about 8 inches below that.

So the first thing you want to do is to crochet a swatch. I used single and double crochet on this shawl, and the important thing is how tall your rows of double crochet are. Because you have to decide how wide you want this to be, and divide the width by four or five (however many times you want it to weave) and that's how many inches wide each strip will be. If your shawl is going to be 10 inches wide, and your double crochet is 1/2 inch tall, you'll do four rows for each seperate strip of the shawl (because weaving them together takes up a little space too).

Chain the length you want. Double crochet as many rows as you want in a strip.

Now is where you need to do some math. The weaving is inset from the ends, so measure about 8 inches from each end and mark it (with a piece of yarn, a safety pin or a stitch marker, whatever works for you.) There's no right side to this, so you don't have to worry about that.

Then, whatever your finished width is going to be, measure that far from the first marker, toward the middle on each side. This is the area that's going to be woven.

Okay. So your first strip is done and you've put in your markers. The next row is single crochet. So single crochet until you hit the first marker, then CHAIN (so it's unattached to the strip) as many stitches as there are between the markers, put the other end of the strip through the loop, and attach again at the second marker. You'll do this over and over again. Then continue single crocheting. When you reach the third marker, chain again as many chains as there are between markers, and weave this chain over and under (or under and over) the existing strips, so that you have four pieces (the two ends of the strip, and two lines of chains) woven together in a basketweave.

Finish single crocheting to the end of the row, turn, and do as many double crochet as you do in a strip. If you follow your edge, you'll be weaving as you go, just passing your hook through the hole each time you hit it. And flip the chain row over as you double crochet, nobody will see it and it'll be WAY easier than trying to double crochet on the back of the chain.

And that's it. Each strip is x number of rows wide, then you do a row of single crochet, breaking free at the first and third markers into a chain, weaving the chain among the existing strips, then reattaching it at the second and fourth markers.

Here's a closeup of the woven part:

The shawl I made had four strips; I could probably have fitted a fifth row, but I thought it looked better with four.

Mistakes I made that I can warn you about:

And I finished it with fringe. A note about fringe