Socks for DP

First--hooray for vacation! Two days off to knit, spin and do laundry. Sweet. Before I left work, I picked up this phone call:

Me: Non-Profit X, this is Spider.

Weirdo: Hi; am I correct in assuming that you prepare chicken soup with matzah balls for purchase?

Me: I'm sorry, we don't sell food here.

Weirdo: Well, I was told that you did. I need some for my friend. Can you tell me where I could buy it?

What I wanted to say was that she should look up a recipe, but I refrained.

When I got home there was a surprise waiting: my yarn shipment from the Loopy Ewe. It contained (amongst other things) two skeins of Claudia Handpainted in Ink; a very subtle black/shades-of-grey colorway. I made my sweet husband, DP, feel them and then sprung the news: they'd be socks for him. He took it well, and if he decides he can't handle handmade socks, our feet are the same size...

In between knitting socks and spinning more yarn for knitting socks, I'm trying to come up with a motif for my next shawl. I have one skein of Shaefer Anne, which was enough to make a triangle shawl 3.5 feet long and 5.5 across the hypotenuse. I'd like to branch out into my own pattern, but I have to find something that looks right with the yarn and that won't require more than 560 yards of it. I'm thinking using starlight lace or bleeding hearts, but I don't know if bleeding hearts will be open enough, and starlight is a bit wacky to chart (the stitch count changes on the 6th row, I think). I'll probably go through my Barbara Walkers a few more times before I even get to the swatch stage.