Shawl Surprises

I know readers have been awaiting the modeled photos of the shawl in all its autumnal glory. I intended to show you pictures like this:


or like this:
or even this:

as I wore this shawl this weekend to my cousin's wedding. It was going to be a quick little entry, something like this:

Pattern: Forest Canopy Shawl by Susan Pierce Lawrence
Yarn: Schaefer Anne
Mods: none except for change in yarn weight in pattern.

I was going to tell you about how I would highly recommend this pattern to the beginning lace knitter, because in every row, you have two signposts to tell you if you have made a mistake. If you get to the YOs in the center, and your stitch count is off, you have made a mistake. If you get to the last YO stitches at the end of a row, and your stitch count is off, you made a mistake. There was very little frogging needed, and NO LIFE LINES necessary. I was going that thank Margene for recommending it and Susan for designing it, and I was going to urge everyone to knit it and I was going to take recommendations for my next lace shawl pattern. I was also going to wax on and on about Anne and just tell everyone to Get. Some. Anne. Now.

I was going to bitch a little about how no one even noticed my shawl, but my wonderful sisters (I include my sisters-in-law in the general term) all fawned over the shawl, looked covetously, and one sister-in-law (the one who managed to get my Regia socks) even told my brother when they were getting ready that she wished she had a shawl like mine. (Note to self: explore this further.)

But that is not what I am going to tell you about. Blog-friends, I got knit-spotted at my cousin's wedding. A wedding guest in a chic little black dress, whom I remembered as a reader at the ceremony, approached me and acknowledged (note: she didn't ask) that I was wearing a hand-knit. She asked me if it was Flower Basket. I told her it was Forest Canopy. Knitters met, having spied the pattern across this room. This was awesome! I mean, we were surrounded by Muggles, and she spotted the knit. It is one thing to sit next to someone at a Yarn Harlot reading who just-so-happens to be knitting the same sock pattern as you, but at a wedding? Crazy!

So we sought each other out at another time, and you'll never guess who it was...Ashley! Go check her out (if you don't already -- we have readers in common, as we discovered!) and view her lovely knits and her fantastic blog. We even came out of the knit blogger closet to my cousin, who very kindly told us that our nerdy hobby was really cool and hip.

What a pleasure it was to meet you, Ashley. It was a highlight of a night that was wonderful to begin with.