My daughter likes skulls, I’m not sure why.  She’s liked them since she was a teenager.  With our recent Arctic cold weather, I started thinking about what I could crochet for her, to keep her warm in way that doesn’t look old-ladyish.

I looked around online and found a pattern on Ravelry for a Lost Souls Skull Shawl by Maryetta Roy.  It looked perfect!  It’s lacy and has a nice finished edge.  At first look in photos, it just looks like a lacy, dressy shawl.  But if you look again, wow.  Skulls!

I struggled at first with the pattern, a lot.  I had to pull out whole rows when I realized belatedly that I’d made a mistake.  I eventually set aside my first attempt of several rows and started completely over.

But I found that once I really understood the pattern (“oh right, this row has 6 stitches for the skull.  The last one had 10, and the next one will have 4”), I was on a roll.  I crocheted in every spare moment.  I think that the warmth of the growing shawl was a good motivator.

I decided to use black yarn, because my daughter likes to wear that color (she’s really a sweet girl, despite how she sounds!)  I used what I had on hand, a “Super Saver Jumbo” sized skein of Red Heart medium weight (4–worsted) yarn.  The wrapper says that it’s actually 3 skeins worth of yarn, which came in handy, given how much yarn this project took.  It took about 1 1/3 skeins of this yarn (my dear hubby went to Walmart in this frigid cold to get me a 2nd skein, dear man!)  I used a 5.75 mm hook, to be honest because I couldn’t find my 5.5 hook, which is recommended.  I suppose this made the skulls a bit bigger, but I like the look.

As to my original question, can a skulls shawl be pretty, I think the answer is (oddly enough), yes!

I won’t be seeing my daughter in the next few days, so I’m going to mail it to her.  I haven’t told her about it, and can’t help but wonder what the look on her face will be when she sees it.  Will it be “Wow, cool!” or “Oh no, what was Mom thinking?”  I added a note saying that she can just use it as a throw on the sofa as well.  You know, not embarrass herself outside the house wearing Mom’s latest project.  🙂

It’ll be fun to see what she decides to do with it.

UPDATE:  My daughter got the shawl in the mail yesterday.  She told me she loves it, and called it “pretty AND badass”.   I think that’s a great description for this pretty, creepy, and yes, badass piece of crochet work.  It’s a hit!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s a pic of my daughter wearing her shawl: