I wanted to hand-make my mom’s Christmas gift this year, so I decided to make her my first shawl.

This really didn’t take me a full 4 months to make. I only worked on it a bit each week during church and at our bi-monthly knitting gatherings.

It was a super simple pattern -- start with 3 stitches, then just make one stitch at the beginning and end of each RS row, then purl the WS row. About 1/3 of the way through I kind of wished it had some sort of pattern to it and that’s when I added the heart in the middle.

The heart was just a set of 2 (YO and k2tog) on opposite sides of the middle of the shawl (which I marked).

To make the heart:
-- First mark the center of the shawl.
-- For the first row 9where you want the heart to start), do 1 YO, k2tog in the middle of the RS row where marked, purl the WS row.
-- Next RS row, about 3 stitches before the middle, YO, k2tog, k2 across the middle, then k2tog, YO, and knit the rest of the row.
-- For the third row, I added a second set of YO/k2tog so there were 2 on each side of the middle. So 5 stitches from the middle on RS row, YO, k2tog, YO, k2tog, knit the 2 stitches on opposite sides of the middle, k2tog, YO, k2tog, YO, knit to end of the row.
-- For each subsequent RS row, increase number of stitches to middle marker by 2 until the heart is as big as you want it.
-- On the row where the heart is the desired widest width, insert YO, k2tog at center of heart (middle marker) on the same row to create the middle point.
-- For subsequent rows, work in reverse by decreasing outer YO/k2tog by 2 stitches on either side of the middle, and increasing inner (point) stitches by 2 until the YO/k2tog meet to form the top of the heart.