I totally get it.

Lace knitting. I get it. You spend hours tackling a chart, having to tink back two rows at least a dozen times before you're through, but like child birth, some of the pain fades when you hold that gorgeous creation in your hands. You made it and it's beautiful.

The veil is done. However, I'm not unveiling it (ba-dum bum) until the wedding. I cast off that last stitch though, and the whole thing floated off the needles. Wider than I thought, so that it billows in folds as a veil but also will work quite well as a shawl once the wedding is through. It will have a second life, which is good. It's too pretty to only use once and it took way too much time to make.

I was with my niece when I finished the veil. In fact, the two of us were sitting on my parent's family room couch, me knitting, her watching me knit with fascination as she talked about all the washcloths she will make when I teach her to knit. (She's really just too cute for words sometimes.) The veil did its magic on her too. Twice, she insisted I drape it over her shoulders, so she could do a spin and a twirl and feel like a princess, as lace shawls are wont to make a girl feel.

The niece is going to be my flower girl, and I decided then and there exactly what she needs as a gift for being in the wedding party:

Oh, lace knitting, you have sucked me in. Hers will be a bit smaller, I think, and I'm using a different, simpler pattern, called Eliinas, so I can get it done without constant chart checking and tinking. I only have a month in which to get it done. (Am I insane? Could be...)

For the first time in the history of my short knitting career, I also have two wips (works in progress) on the needles at the same time, both in similar states of completion, because before starting the flower girl shawl, I had already made headway on my son's giant scarf. I'm calling it the Not Quite a Circus Scarf, in honor of the chunky acrylic yarn in the circus colorway he almost insisted I use.

It's huge, this scarf. I have plans that he will be able to fold it over for double thickness, but if it ends up too heavy, I'll have to frog it and start it over with less stitches at the cast on. I hope it's not too heavy.

The scarf is a nice thing to pick up when I want some mindless knitting to relax with, so I'm not going to feel bad about breaking my one wip rule. If I only have lace knitting, I might go quietly mad. In other words, I do get it. Lace knitting is a thing of wonder, but sometimes, I just need a break from all those yarn-overs.