Time for some Salsa!

 I've been on a mission for the past couple weeks.  I was really wanting a shrug to wear with my summer tank tops.  Probably half my summer wardrobe is sleeveless tops, but so far this summer I've barely been wearing them.

Memorial Day weekend, I went to an outdoor party one evening and got bitten by a few mosquitoes.  Normally I get pretty big welts, but they're gone the next day.  This time, I woke up the next morning with hives all over my torso (not attractive!)

Over the next couple weeks, the hives came back about every other day.  I got it checked out at the doctor's office and she gave me a prescription that is supposed to help suppress them for the next month.  It helped a little bit, but they still came back a couple times a week.

Anyway, being polka-dotted did not inspire me to bear a lot of skin early in the summer.  The hives have only come back once since finishing the 30-day prescription, so I'm hopeful that this little episode is coming to an end.  But the curse of having fair skin is that any time something disturbs it (zits, scratches, HIVES), I end up with dark marks that take months to fade.  So even though the hives aren't much of a problem now, I am still all sorts of polka dotted, especially on my back.

Enter - the Salsa Shrug!  It's constructed in one piece (sleeves are knit together with the body, not separately), then the border of the body & sleeves are worked from picked up stitches. Between it being a construction I've never made before and the gorgeous yarn I used, it was a really fun one to make.  I'd love to write a pattern for multiple sizes, but the main measurement is one that isn't on any sizing charts, so I'm going to have to figure out how to get that measurement for a range of sizes in order for me to write this properly.  Do you think people on the street will mind if I approach them with a measuring tape and ask them if I could have a moment of their time?