Prayer shawl

Just the beginning of the shawl I am crocheting. The picture is upside down (sent it from my phone). I got the idea of a Prayer Shawl from my sister, Margaret Ann, several months ago. She happened to mention it either on the phone or in a chat on Facebook. I loved the idea and since I don't belong to a church here in The Netherlands, I don't know of any Prayer Shawl Ministry here. I immediately went to the internet to look up prayer shawl patterns. Basically, a prayer shawl is just a shawl that has been prayed over and/or blessed and given to a person in need, whether that be due to illness or just emotional need. I found lots and lots of shawl patterns both knitted and crocheted. My knitting leaves a lot to be desired, so I mainly looked at crocheted patterns. I found a very lovely lacey shawl done in white bamboo yarn. I loved the shawl and the idea of the bamboo yarn so I copied the pattern and began searching for the yarn. Perhaps I can find something here but I wasn't sure where to begin my search, so I just waited until I went to Texas for my vacation and checked out both Hobby Lobby and WalMart. WalMart does carry the brand but not the bamboo yarn. Darn. Then, I went to Hobby Lobby. They carry a different brand of bamboo and along side the yarn was a free pattern for a lacey shawl very similar to the one I had found. I took the pattern and bought the required amount of yarn and a new crochet hook since I didn't have my hooks with me and got started immediately on the shawl. The center is done not with a simple chain as I had anticipated but with a special stitch that you add to as you go. It didn't go very well for me and left a rather thick ridge down the center that I didn't like. And as well, I hadn't made enough stitches and came out too short. Ripped it out and started over. The ridge remained and I still wasn't pleased with the way it looked so I took a look at the original internet pattern. The internet pattern will be a bit shorter than the one I was using, so I made a chain to go with the free pattern instead of the internet pattern (which required 4 balls of yarn and I had only bought 3 for the free pattern). As I came to the end of the chain, I was actually one chain stitch short but I went on anyway and as it ends up, you can't tell. I contined with the free pattern and that has been working out beautifully.