All Because of a Shawl: Semi Tropical Shawl

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Megan loved the irony of living in Maine and knitting herself a “Semi-Tropical Shawl.”

“I’m about as far from a semi-tropical climate as I am from winning the lottery,” she laughed as she and Val, her best friend, sat at an outdoor café in downtown Portland, knitting and drinking iced tea. “But it’s such a beautiful design.”

Val said, “Well, someone always wins the lottery. Maybe this shawl is telling you something…like, maybe you’ll go somewhere semi-tropical.”

“It’s telling me that I picked a great project,” Megan replied. “I just adore the yarn—it’s so soft; the colors remind me of sand dunes and sea shells.” She admired the swath of lace cascading from her needles, a rich interplay of openwork stitches and soothing colors. The genius of the Semi-Tropical Shawl, Megan decided, was its alluring combination of beauty and comfort.

***

Later that week an invitation arrived by mail. “You won’t believe this,” Megan told Val on the phone. “Amy’s December wedding is going to be in Sayulita, Mexico. What was she thinking? That everyone would willingly travel thousands of miles to her ‘destination event’?”

“Exactly,” said Val. “You won the lottery, girlfriend!”

“What?”

“I told you—someone has to win the lottery. You’re that someone. You’ll go to a semi-tropical, gorgeous resort on the Pacific, with your Semi-Tropical Shawl. And you’ll have a great time. It’s called destiny!”

Megan mulled this over as she finished the project. She envisioned flying to Mexico, the shawl cocooned around her as she watched cloudscapes from the plane. The shawl was at the pre-wedding barbecue, draped across her chair in case she felt cold. It embraced her the next morning, as she walked to the beach through a stand of coconut palms. And it was with her that afternoon as Amy and Brad exchanged vows and Megan felt a joyful frisson cross her shoulders, bared by her sleeveless silk dress.

Of course she’d go to Sayulita. She wouldn’t miss Amy’s wedding for anything!

—

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A story by Selma Moss-Ward.

Selma Moss-Ward writes and knits in Rhode Island. You can find her work on our blog, as well as Lion Brand’s monthly newsletter, Pattern Journal, which you can subscribe to here.