What's in a Name?

Last year for Christmas I gifted my friend Heather with some yummy green cashmere yarn, because she's a terrific person and she likes me, I think, rather more than I deserve. A good quality in a friend. Anyways, I said, "I'll design a shawl pattern for it." And she took me up on it.
I decided that I would base the design on...heather (the plant) and I would use heather yarn to knit my test version. (KnitPicks Shadow in either Lost Lake Heather or Oregon Coast Heather. I'm leaning more towards Lost Lake Heather at the moment) because, well using a yarn with "Heather" in the name amuses me. I'm like that. I was initially thinking more "stole" than "shawl", but in an impromptu survey of myself, Celtic Queen and Heather, I found that although I preferred rectangular stoles, CQ liked a round/square shawl, and Heather liked triangular shawls. So a triangle it was. And also, Heather really likes knitted leaves. The yarn is green, so why not a leaf theme to the shawl? Sounds perfect. So, I poured over lace pattern books on my own and with Heather and I think I'm about ready to start swatching. As soon as I order my yarn. But here's the thing. As I was thinking about the shawl...well it's all about Heather and leaves. But I don't want to call it that. Because, if you know her, well, she doesn't really like here all that much. Now, I can so totally understand the need to have something to gripe about. No one's life is perfect, and sometimes you just need to vent a little and complaining about the crummy weather/mean people/lack of decent local wine where you live is not a bad way to go. But as I told her last week, when she says these things it makes me a little afraid she might move away. My weird superstitious-ness makes me think that if I start putting those two words together....So this is just the HEATHER shawl. It has a LEAF theme. Got it?

On the baby knitting front, I've completed the second front of my latest Devan sweater, and cast-on the first sleeve. As you can see, I'm making no effort to match sides here. I like the randomness of the stripe pattern of this yarn. With some effort, I could get this done by next weekend.