Eh, Happy Thanksgiving, Canada and Introducing my Ashton Shawl

Today, the second Monday in October is Canada's Thanksgiving.  It was proclaimed an official holiday in 1957 to celebrate the harvest bounty Canada is blessed with each year.  Since 1971 when the U.S. moved its Columbus Day observance to Mondays, the two celebrations have coincided.  Canada's celebration of this holiday may seem early for those from the U.S., but it aligns with the English and continental European, Harvest Festival.  This helps explain why it doesn't match the late November celebration in the States.  (As we all know, Canada has been closely linked to Great Britain throughout its existence.)

Paul and I, like many fellow Canadians, celebrated with a traditional meal yesterday (except we substituted a roast chicken for the turkey.)  Paul was kind enough to take this photo before diving into the meal.  What is not shown is a pumpkin pie that used maple syrup as the sweetener instead of white sugar.   Paul says it makes the pie lighter; he'll have to explain what that means.  Pie and light seem incongruent to me.

Additionally, I celebrated the day by knitting wholeheartedly on a lace shawl.  My knit buddies and I decided before I left for Minneapolis that the three of us would benefit from taking a lace class.  Tena followed up on the concept and found in order to take the class this fall we would need to travel to her once LYS in downtown Vancouver.  The class runs for four weeks starting at 6:30 pm.  Now the three of us are all retired and have time to avoid rush hour traffic so this 2 hour class takes us 6 hours because we build in time to eat dinner out as well as make the 2-3 hour travel time round trip to the class.  This is a lovely way to spend time from my POV, with friends, eating and taking a knitting class; it's a trifecta of good stuff.

Each of us decided to knit a different shawl; pity the poor instructor.  Pam is doing the Elder Tree Shawl in a white/cream coloured fingering weight yarn; Tena, the Brandywine Shawl in a slightly variegated green/brown sock weight yarn, and I'm knitting the Ashton Shawl in a dark fingering weight yarn.  (Don't worry, you'll have ample opportunity to see their work as well as mine.  Today you'll just have to be content with going to the links.)  We had our first meeting last week and all agreed the two hour class seemed to just fly by.  Perhaps all that concentrating caused the class to seem as if it were a blink of the eye.

At any rate here's a photo of what the designer, Dee O'Keefe, has in mind for my Ashton Shawl:

The Ashton Shawl complete and beautifully blocked

And here's where I am so far, obviously not yet blocked. 

This shawl is knit from the top down and I am about 3 hours from finishing the upper most part with the rectangular shapes. The yarn is a Madeline Tosh fingering weight called Mare (mare in French means pond and I suspect that is what the name refers to and not the female horse).  The first time I laid eyes on this yarn I knew I had to make something with it. The hand dying allows for black, blue and brown tones to melt together beautifully and Tosh yarn is always so yummy and soft it is a joy to work up. 

As for the pattern O'Keefe designed, there are a few key things you should know about it:

1. It is free on Ravelry.
2. It is designed as the first shawl a knitter would make, meaning all the directions are written as if you don't already know what to do.  This is a great help to someone like me.
3. The instructions about how to use and read knitting charts are very clear and complete.
4. O'Keefe gives the knitter options by describing how to increase the size of the shawl, and since I have two hanks of my yarn, I am going to increase its size from shawlette to a full-fledged shawl.
5. O'Keefe describes how to block a finished shawl to turn it from ugly duckling into a beautiful shawl.

And now because I took a picture, here's a close up of that design element I have been working on for the past several days:

I must forewarned you, this project will be sucking up most of the knitting time for the next three weeks so the odds are good you'll either see or hear a great deal about it; so far it has really been a joy.  Perhaps following my own self-imposed rules for knitting lace developed this summer has helped!