In the interest of avoiding bathroom/mirror shots for my FO pictures, I have K as my designated photographer. She went to art school and knows more about taking pictures than I do, as I learned photography taking pictures of the animatronic multicultural children on the "It's a Small World" ride (the photos were always out of focus, and generally included one of my fingers).
We always wait until I have a bunch of FOs and then we do a "photo shoot" in some location that is far nicer than my bathroom. The first batch we did earlier this year was at the beach in Evanston (it's a lake beach, so, you know, it's not TOO exotic. Also it was freezing). This time, we decided to go to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. I had a bunch of shawls and scarves so we figured it wouldn't be too difficult to schlep them around, and we'd find some nice scenery to go with it.
Anyway, this particular post is about the
Aestlight, a pattern that I loved as soon as I saw it. I think it's the lace part. This pattern actually took me a while to knit because I ran out of yarn on the edging. I decided to start the edging over again with two fewer stitches per "scallop," but still ran out of yarn. It is pretty nervewracking wondering if you're going to have enough yarn to finish, so I just gave up on the edging and knitted some rows in garter, an eyelet row, and then more garter rows until I had enough to bind off and that was that.
Yarn is 1 skein of Pagewood Farm Denali in the "Sky Blue Pink" colorway. I think the colorway is kind of misleading because there might be sky blue in there but there is really not any pink. The purple parts are lovely! Also, in certain (not-natural) lighting, there is a lot more green. Since we went with the sun as our lighting, you won't see the greens.
A few more photos are on my
Ravelry project page.
What I didn't realize at the time was that K had an ulterior motive for wanting to take photos at the Botanic Gardens (and here I thought it was just her love of art, or me, or maybe my knitting...?). We had already taken pictures of two other FOs, but I really wanted to take pictures of the Aestlight in the Dwarf Conifer section, which is my favorite. We found a bench (pictured above) with a nice view and after taking some photos of the shawl, K said she wanted to take some more pictures of me wearing the shawl. I sat down on the bench and she started rearranging the shawl and positioning me so that she'd get her good shots (or whatever. I know nothing about photography). I lamented that I had not planned for the photo shoot properly and chosen an outfit that actually matched any of my shawls. K said, "I have something that would go with your shawl..."
...and suddenly she was down on one knee and proposing to me!!!!!! WHAT. It is still surreal. Clever K, distracting me with my knitting so that I wouldn't see it coming. I mean, I guess it has been almost 8 years and I should have seen it coming.
So, I went to the Botanic Gardens to take fancy pictures of my knitting, and came back with a fancy ring and I AM ENGAGED, EVERYONE. This is more exciting than knitting and whistles combined.
