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.

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.