Alpaca's Don't go Camping

I don't go camping now either, put off by the annual camping holiday taken every year of my childhood to some place in the UK that normally had good weather but for the week we were visiting, would bring out the rain, wind, and on one occasion, snow, just for our delight.  I've had tents blow away, I've camped next to a sewage works, a fog horn and a field of cows that seemed bent on talking all flippin' night.  I've experienced leaky tents, draughty tents, and tents that partially fell over in the night.  I've camped at the bottom of a hill when there was torrential rain, which gathered, rather predictably, in the inner tent flooring, so we were virtually able to float about the bedroom on our lilo's. 
And of course you can't actually talk above a whisper in a tent for fear of either "waking the neighbours", "disturbing the neighbours" or "making an exhibition of yourself".  Children had to stand in particular places, or be outside whilst cooking was occurring.  Footwear of any kind, as well as dirty feet, were not allowed in the inner tent for fear of sand getting into the bedding.  Children were also banned from being shoeless anywhere other than the inner tent, necessitating a rather precarious dance in which the shoe had to be removed from the left foot whilst standing like a stork on the right foot.  The left foot was then placed in the inner tent and you stood on the left foot whilst elevating the right foot outward so it didn't join you in the inner sanctum and taking off the second item of footwear.  This normally caused me (as I have poor balance) to either fall outward onto the table and get yelled at for nearly knocking over the table/causing the lamp to rock/messing around or fall backwards into the bedroom and get yelled at for failing to remove the shoe before I fell in/endangering the life of the inner tent/going into the bedroom with a dirty foot.

Anyway, I imagine that these, and many other reasons, are why alpaca's don't go camping.  All of which is a very unnecessary introduction to my latest completed project.  The pattern is called Camping, is designed by MwaaKnits, and I knit it in alpaca yarn.  Hence the rather bonkers name.

And unlike my childhood camping holidays, I enjoyed every minute of knitting this shawl.  The yarn is the alpaca which I dyed with Kool Aid a few months back.  I actually overdyed a couple of the skeins to make the colours all work better together.  I think the shawl would look better in one colour but this was what I had, and I desperately wanted to knit this pattern.  The shawl is actually lovely and soft and squishy to wear and smells delightfully of fruity Kool Aid as well.  I didn't have enough yarn of similar colours to knit the shawl to the full size, it should have four repeats of the leaves but I only had enough yarn for two repeats.  I actually ran short of yarn again at the last safe moment which is why the shawl is cast off in a darker shade.  Having said all of that, I think in the end it all worked out well and the whole thing is very pleasing.  Its a lot easier to knit than it looks as well.

The shawl is a PI shawl, so each pattern ring has double the number of stitches as the previous one.  It was difficult to get it started neatly but I used Emily Ocker's cast on as recommended by the pattern designer and after a bit of fiddling got it to work.  The pattern is in honour of Elizabeth Zimmerman who created the PI shawl, and Mwaa Knits designed three circular shawls, and each has a half circular sister, so six in all.  The Camping shawl has paw prints at the centre to honour a pet belonging to Elizabeth, the next ring is twigs, then leaves, then finally waves and droplets.  It took an entire box of dressmaking pins and all my T pins, plus four flexible blocking wires to get this thing pinned out to block and took over an hour to block it out.  I think the result was worth it.  The end result is 48 inches in diameter and weighs just over 350 grammes.  There's a nice mix of metric and imperial measurements for you.

 I love the shawl, I love the feel of it, and the alpaca softness.  I really, really enjoyed knitting it, even the last rounds with 876 stitches on the needles.  But... I have to confess that I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do with it now I have made it.  Where would you wear a circular shawl?  I don't go to the sort of parties where a wrap of that kind would be needed.  I'm not even that sure how you are supposed to wear a circular shawl.