The unveiling

The man is now the husband. It's still a bit surreal to say that. "I have a husband." I thought that this change wouldn't really affect much, other than the fact that I am now obligated to wear at least one piece of jewelry every day. We've been living together for three years. He takes care of my son. We were spouses already, but something clicked into place after the wedding. I'm not sure how to explain it. We're just more complete somehow, like saying how we feel (through the vows written by our dear friend Jolynn) in front of a bunch of people we know made it more real, more permanent. Maybe we're just high on leftover wedding cake.

Either way, I walked down that aisle and I am ecstatic. I had my borrowed and refitted temple white wedding dress and my homemade ivory veil. I got a lot of compliments on the veil from those that knew I made it. It didn't seem to matter that it was not the exact color of the dress. I tried peroxide-based bleach. Still no change. I tried whitener. That swatch felt like a brillo pad by the end of the process, even if it was whiter. I tried bluing. It turned the swatch vaguely green, though it did look a little whiter against the dress. In the end, I decided just to leave it alone.

My maid of honor Kristin insisted that really, it looked just fine together and the veil was pretty and took so long to make that I should just let it be and move on. A lot of my relatives knew I was making the veil and they all had compliments. Two cousins who did not know asked my mom: what's up with the veil? Not that it looked bad; they just know there had to be a story, which my mom shared. The response: it was perfect, because I'm a different sort of person and it made the wedding mine that there was something "unique" to it. I can live with that. And you know what? I loved my veil and that I got to say "Yep, I made that."

The niece loved her shawl too. Despite the 90 degree weather outside, when I presented it to her, she insisted on wearing it all over the non-air-conditioned house.

Already fashion savvy, she found several unique ways of wearing her shawl: as shawl, as scarf, as headdress. I'm waiting for her to discover it would make an excellent pair of butterfly wings.

Crochet that Knit, or how not to get whites their whitest

My For the Flowergirl shawl (the Eliinas pattern) is off the needles, but like the veil, I won't be revealing what it looks like in full until after the wedding. Let me tell you, this little shawl is a trickster. The first repeats go by so quickly, with plain stockette and two patterned yarn overs every other row and a row of yarn overs every 14 rows at row 11.  I didn't have to even glance at the chart. The pattern called for 10 repeats, but as I only had 1 ball of yarn to use and the recipient is 6, I figured 6 repeats was plenty. Fortunately for me, I glanced ahead at the math involved. Turns out I needed multiples of 10 plus a few stitches for my new stitch count to work with the second chart, so it ended up a little shy of 6 repeats for the first chart.



Then the trouble began. Doing that last chart once took longer than going the first chart 6 times. Don't get me wrong. It was beautiful when all was said and done, but sheesh. I tinked and stumbled and stared at that chart like my life depended on it. If anyone so much as breathed funny, there was a chance I'd make a yarn over in error. I admit to yelling at the kids for banter that was totally normal and 100 percent allowable on any other day but complex lace-knitting day. Such is the life of the youthful offspring/relative of a knitter.


Yesterday was the bind off. It was a new one for me, called the crochet chain bind off. The directions were a bit vague, so I searched google for a more illustrated explanation. Soon, I was crocheting away. It involves crocheting a certain number of knit stitches off the needle (in my case, an alternation of 2 and 3) and then single crocheting the loop formed from crocheting the knit stitches together into the loop that is already on the crochet hook. Then chaining a certain number of stitches (in my case, 9) before crocheting together the next set of knit stitches. It looks like it will be very pretty once it's blocked, but the edge is very messy at the moment of bind off. It also took far longer than a what a normal bind off would take. By the time I held a finished shawl in my hands, it was already bedtime (10 pm).

However, I admit, it was a lot funner than a normal bind off, which I find tedious and awkward no matter how many times I've done it. Knitting needles just don't like to lift stitches and move them over other stitches. I like the idea of this style of bind off, because it takes advantage of what crochet does best. As a knitter who also crochets, I'm keen on mixing crochet and knitting, and one day, I plan on playing around with pattern ideas that do that (and maybe creating a few of my own). I may be ready to get going on this venture, as a matter of fact. While perusing for the crochet chain bind off instructions, I also found a suggestion for a crochet bind off that works like a normal bind off but replaces the left needle with a crochet hook. It's supposed to be stretchier that normal too. I may have just found my bind off method of choice.

In the meantime, the wedding approaches. The dress (originally purchased by my sister for a wedding she didn't have and thus not my size) came back from the seamstress taken in a bit on the sides and several inches in the hem, as she is tall and planned for heels and I am not tall and have already purchased my ballet flats. A new trouble awaited when I did the full try-on: dress, shoes, and veil. The veil, you see, is in a vintage white yarn I purchased before I knew that the dress was available. The dress is temple white. I was not overly concerned, as perfect matchy matchy has never been my likely state of dress (except for those sweaters with the matching scarfs, which I love). However, the off white  looked yellow against the dress white. Problem. I googled for answers and sampled with lemon juice and peroxide, neither of which did any good after the light dips I gave my test swatch.

It was the fiance who noted that the room we were in with the dress had yellow lighting. We brought the dress and veil out into natural light and I felt quite a bit better. The veil was still not the same white as the dress, but it no longer looked canary. I still have a few experiments to try out: bluing, laundry whitener treatment, and a non chlorine organic bleach (in other words, better peroxide), not to mention the fact that I have since found sites with better directions. Apparently, the yarn is supposed to soak overnight in the peroxide, not five minutes. I am hopeful, though not confident, that one of these options will work. If not, the veil will just have to be the off white it's always been. At least it won't look neon.

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.

Attack of the killer sterilized cat

Over the Easter weekend, I had a bit of time to make headway on the veil. Because I was at my parents' house, carless, and in a position to kick my son outside to play in the fenced-in yard, I spent quite a bit of the weekend sitting in a chair in the sun on the enclosed back porch, knitting.

They have a new cat, who was found out back in a nest with her four siblings over six months ago. She had a brother go to my brother and another brother went off to live with my sister. Her two sisters were adopted by a cat-loving couple who are good friends of my brother-in-law. At the six month mark, she became eligible for reproductive part and claw removal (my dad makes his own woodwork from scratch so it was either declaw the cat or put it down), so for the past three weeks now, my mother has been very adamant that we need to keep the cat calm, rather than allowing her to play in the rough-and-tumble way that kittens do. The cat, of course, wants no part in calm anything and promptly makes her way into as much mischief as she can.

Apparently, this goes double when mohair is involved. There I sat, yarning over and counting my stitches while watching my son jump on the newly erected trampoline. Suddenly, my knitting was pulled from my grasp. Alarmed I looked down and there was a cat with the long tail from the cast-on end dangling in her mouth. She managed to separate a few strains of mohair before I disentangled her from the veil. From then on, every ten stitches or so, she would leap at my right-hand needle with enthusiasm before falling to the floor, having no claws to catch her footing on my nice neat stockinette. I eventually gave up after finishing my row and used the free needle to swing in the kitten's general direction so that she could pounce in earnest. When she tired of the game, I shut her in the porch with the slider's screen door and sat at the table to start the next row.

She attacked my mohair twice on Easter morning as well, but at least I was better prepared. I have seen many a cartoon featuring a fluffy kitten and a ball of yarn, but it never really occurred to me to be on the watch for fiber-munching felines. My cat is more than content to sit just beyond arm's length on the couch from where I am knitting and fall asleep. He only gets bite-y if you decide to reach out that arm to pet him if he's not in the mood for human interaction. Never has my Kitkat attacked my yarn without very consistent provocation. And for that, I am now very grateful. My cat is fiber-considerate. And he plays a mean game of billiards.

When a knitter plans a wedding.

My first thought, when I began tackling the wedding plans was this: could I knit the dress? This insanity quickly cooled to a much more reasonable knitting of the veil. Then the hunt began.

I've never knitted lace before, so I was rather anxious to pick just the right pattern, one that would be interesting enough without becoming too difficult for a first time effort. I searched through book after book, page after ravelry page of anything that popped up under the restrictions of "knitting" and "free" and "lace." Finally, it hit me. I'd use one of the earliest patterns I found, a circular shawl pattern meant to replicate a chrysanthemum's petals. 

I'm deconstructing the circular and knitting it back and forth on size eleven wooden needles I inherited from my soon-to-be grandmother-in-law using sport-weight yarn instead of lace-weight. So far I'm happy with the progress. It looks a little wild, but with every few rows, it looks less like the random distribution of cobweb and more like a veil.

Lace. Is it mesmerizing? Not really. Do I get why so many knitters are enthralled with it. Maybe a little. But with every stitch, I'm a little closer to being married, a little nearer to having my family considered complete in the legal sense. And a little closer to having the wedding I didn't get the chance to have the first time around. Not a big thing, just a small, simple homemade affair, something I think this veil will symbolize pretty well. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some knitting to do.