Weaving presents for family and friends is always fun. Sometimes, I get minimal instructions and can basically make whatever I want. Other times, the instructions are pretty specific. This was one of those times.

One of the fun things of writing blogs about handwoven projects is that it encourages me to think about the story behind the project. Yet, sometimes a handwoven shawl is just what it is: a pretty shawl that was fun to weave.

What do you do when you want to make a shawl in shades of blue? There are many possible routes to take, but I decided on revisiting monochrome Corris. It is a great way to achieve a subtle interplay of colors.

Warps with multiple parallel lines have drawn me to using rainbow colors. It took a while for me to appreciate that dialing down the color volume gives equally interesting results. For one of my latest shawls, I stuck to a warp of blues and purples.

My weaving life has been revolving around echoes for months now. With any chosen combination of 8 colors in mind, one could go with either the echo-4 or echo-8 technique to make a wonderful project. I decided to do a fun experiment to compare cloths yielded by these techniques.