Knitting Lace

Knitting lace is rather magical. You begin with hours and hours of knitting two togethers and yarn overs to make the thoughtfully-placed holes that give the design. There's a lot of stitch counting, chart readign, and general mystery.
 Knitters talk about lace "blooming" and I was hoping I could capture a bit of that with this project when I took this picture:

The knitting is done, the ends sewn in, and I gently pinned it to a bath towel for perspective. Here's a bit of the detail:

Then the little beauty jumped into the bath. Suddenly the yarn was slipping and sliding and stretching the way knits do when they're wet. I gave it a quick rinse and ...

See how it stretched out? It now reaches beyond the towel - and I didn't even block it very hard (that's knitter lingo for "I didn't even yank it to the end of it's limits!")
And look at the detail now:

That, my friends, is how it's done!