If...

If you take one knitter with a set of 2mm needles and giver her just under 3 km of gossamer Cash Silk laceweight , add a few audio books (Brideshead Revisited, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities and Little Dorrit) and mix in a few World Cup football matches (apologies again to all England fans) you could get one of these.

The Wedding Ring Shawl (designed by Sharon Miller).

In it's pre-blocked state it was a sizeable 4 feet by 4 feet.  Blocking took it to just under 6 feet square. 

As I discovered when I blocked the Blob last year I'm too old to be faffing about blocking things on the floor.  So a couple of months ago when I saw these square foam pieces on sale I picked some up - and they've transformed the process! 

These squares are each 2ft by 2ft and about 3/4 inch thick.  I put the foam pieces together on my dining table was able to block the shawl easily in record time.

As always the moment when I freed the shawl from the pins was a little magical.  The shawl is light and delicate and I wish that I had the skill to capture that in a photograph.

Of course this is the Wedding Ring Shawl so 'the test' was necessary. 

I ran into a hurdle here - I don't own a wedding ring and although my neigbbhours are lovely, I'm not convinced that my asking to borrow a wedding ring for an hour wouldn't step over the 'neighbourly' line.

Not being a great jewellery wearer myself I didn't have many alternatives to choose from - but eventually found a suitable substitute (well, it's a ring) and tentatively began to pull the end through the ring.

I pulled it through carefully and slowly.  And hurrah!  It worked!

The shawl lives up to its name.   (Well, I guess more accurately it lives up to the name 'Cheap Fashion Ring Shawl' - but that's almost the same.  A rose by any other name and all that....)