LYS Kismet

the holiday 2004 IOU project for my sister is a sweater, but when I ask her what she wants she is exceedingly vague, so I dragged her to my LYS, Arcadia Knitting, to feel up some yarns and maybe look at some patterns. It went like this:

ME: Hello. I'm a knitter and my sister isn't, and she wants a sweater, and I'm wondering if you can help me find some patterns. She wants a like, tie-front cardigan, drapey, to wear in summer.
LOCAL YARN STORE OWNER 1: A what?
ME AND SISTER: [describe some more]
LYSO1: *nod* *turn to magazine on counter* *open to seemingly random page* Like this?
MAGAZINE: [exact style sister wants]
SISTER: Yeah! Just like that!
ME: Wow! Hmm...*begin to examine pattern*
LYSO1: My sister made it, she's wearing it actually. *points to her sister*
LYSO2: *models sweater*

Now that's service. What's more, the pattern picture had a kind of sparkly thin yarn and she had made hers out of a brown mohairy yarn and the differences between the two were very revealing in interpreting the importance of yarn choice to the "sew these four rectangles together" pattern.