but can you stop at one ?

The Forest Canopy Shawl pattern by Susan Lawrence would be much better named Pringles
because the blessed thing is addictive

I made my first one last year
and then there was this one last month
After my brief detour with Kiri, I'm back to the Forest with a vengeance.

Last week I decided to see what would happen if I knitted it in one of my handspun yarns
This single sacred hank of Sea Lavender [ so named after the Sea Lavender colourway of tops dyed by Nancy Ballasteros and bought at Purl's palace in Daylesford ]

is something that was spun over a quite wide interval and of course in the intervening period, my skills developed so one of the plies, done nearly two years ago when I'd only been spinning a couple of months, was less ...mmm... shall we say 'consistent'? ... than the second bobbin done last year during the Tour De Fleece.
Still it came out as quite a nice, soft, well balanced yarn, somewhere between Sport/5ply and DK / 8ply, albeit perhaps a little underspun [ which for you non-spinners means that it's soft as all get-out but probably not going to take a lot of rough wear and abrasion ] so a shawl, scarf or cowl was always going to be a far better choice than, say, socks.

Anyway, I decided to give it a go as lace, and went up a couple of sizes in needle to a 6mm.
As with the last one, I basically used up every scrap of the yarn - and even had to do an emergency ply-up of the last few metres of singles that was hanging around on a bobbin when I ran out with about 20 cast-off stitches to go.
No WAY was I pulling it back a row!I love how it turned out and it is totally my colours but somehow it just seemed to be calling Nadie's name, and who better to own something that I'd put so much time into - I'm a slow spinner y'all - so yesterday when she came up for the day with her friend Natty, and Nat's mum, Ann, I got her to model it and then gave it to her.
Greater love hath no mother :]


Nat didn't go away empty handed either: she's the queen of all things fluff-and-froofy, so she scored an oversized Mobieus Cowl in ultra-long super-fluffy novelty yarn in a really nice blue-which-I-completely-forgot-to-photograph.

and will it surprise anyone to be told that the minute I pinned Nadie's shawl out to block, I started yet another Forest Canopy?

I know it

My name is Susan and I'm a ForestCanopyaholic
It's been half an hour since my last stitch.