Sunflowers...

A friend of mine commissioned this and provided the pattern.  It's not something I would have thought to make by myself, but I am very glad that someone asked me to as it was a lot of fun.  It was also a fair bit of work - each sunflower is crocheted individually, and then joined by crocheting together with the green - again individually.

This meant there were an awful lot of ends to be woven in!

As with all my knitted and crochet wraps and shawls, I washed this carefully by hand and then thought I would pop it in the washing machine for a short spin to get rid of the excess water before blocking it. That was when disaster struck - the washing machine decided it did not want to spin that day, it just kept going round and round, tossing the unfortunate shawl as it went.  Despite several tries, and increasing panic at what might be happening to the shawl, the washing machine never did spin that day.  I ended up taking the shawl out and wringing it by hand before squeezing as much water out as I could by wrapping it in a towel and standing on it.  Thankfully there did not appear to be any damage other than a couple of ends had come loose, and I successfully blocked the shawl - it did take nearly 3 days to dry however!

Mr. B pulled the washing machine out and took the back off it the following day - discovered there was no way he could get into the workings without breaking various seals, so screwed the back on and put the washing machine back in it's place.  Needless to say, it was worked perfectly ever since - go figure!