In Which There Are Many Shawl Photos

You may recall that over the summer, I took part in the Stillness Shawl MKAL organized by Helen Stewart, and knit a truly lovely (but very large) shawl.  Here is the FO post, though at the time it wasn't blocked.  I thought of, and tried, a few different possibilities, but the real problem was that I had no place where I could safely block it and leave it to dry and even more importantly, I didn't have enough blocking materials in the first place!  

Lorette mentioned in the comments that I should send it to her, and she would be happy to block it for me.  I thought that seemed really nice, but figured that I would somehow finagle something.  Long story short, I didn't.  So a few weeks ago, I checked to see if she was willing to give it a shot, and she enthusiastically said to send it to her.  I know she does lots of lace knitting, so it didn't surprise me to think she had someplace to block lace without meaning she had to move everyone out of her house to do so.  I packed it up and sent it on a visit to Washington State (a place I have always wanted to visit, but no, the shawl went instead.  Of course).  I told her there was no hurry, and whenever she had the time and inclination was find with me.

When it was returned, I could not believe how amazing it looked - and that I had actually knit it!  So I took a bunch of photos, and here they are.  I liked the shawl before, but now - WOW!

THANK YOU LORETTE!!!  I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the offer of help in the first place, and then the time you clearly spent getting every part of it to look so nice.  

I love these close-ups - some of these patterns and stitches were completely new to me, and it was so exciting when they worked out!

I have no idea if I will ever join another MKAL and actually participate again, or if I'll ever tackle another project at this level.  But I learned so many new things, and enjoyed this one so much, it was worth all of the time spent figuring it out.

Look how big it is - my arms really started to hurt while The Tim was taking photos!