A (long-)finished object

I ran some errands today, one of which was to my local post office to mail a birthday package to a friend who lives on the other side of the planet (in another hemisphere, even!). Her birthday isn't until next month, but planning in advance lets me avoid the outrageous airmail costs and send stuff by surface mail (which, almost always arrives within two weeks anyway, even though the official estimate is "six to eight weeks"). Among the various items I enclosed was the shawl, which I knit for her some time ago and just haven't been organized enough to send. It's my first--and only, so far--shawl, and I knit it of a synthetic suede yarn that was a lot of fun to work with. In my effort to get as much mileage as possible from the yarn, I started new skeins mid-row--not, as it turns out, the best idea with this yarn, whose woven-in ends are difficult to conceal. So it's not the most polished-looking shawl (in the future, I'll incorporate the ends into the fringe), but I think it looks--and feels--quite nice!