Finished: September 8

When on vacation in Nova Scotia, I did what all the other cool knittas were doing: I bought expensive but gorgeous SeaSilk in an irridescent dark blue colourway. I wasn't sure what to do with it, but I also bought a somewhat fusty stitch dictionary the next day, so I figured that I'd find something.

Later that summer, knitting away at Lettuce Knit's Wednesday night Stitch n' Bitch, there was what can only be described as a migratory rush. Alice had just made her single skein shawl pattern availible, and knittas were buying it in droves. The pattern was going so fast that I caved to peer pressure half-way through the night - so much for doing my own thing. I spent the next 6 weeks knitting it with the idea that I would then wear it to St. Stephen's wedding in early September. It was...interminable. But is smelled so good that I couldn't give up. I watched Amy finish hers in Glacier, I watched Diane knit and rip and knit again on her corroded beauty, and I kept on knittin'. I watched Clash of the Titans three times, just to get through some particularly boring segments. (Put on a shirt, Harry Hamlin.) I also watched Wilby Wonderful twice, so there's a fair bit of love for Callum Keith Rennie knit into the middle third.

And then, after a needle change and an entire August dedicated to its creation, it was done. I bought materials for a blocking board at the Home Depot, borrowed an old sheet from my mom and sewed it on when the staples proved ineffective. I pinned that fucker for 2 days, one half at a time. I blocked the crap out of it, as Amy did (which way was that piece of peer pressure going?) Finally, I was ready for the wedding.

Punchline: the wedding was outdoors. I was too cold to take off my coat and show off the shawl. [Insert satirical horn noises here.] Just to see it on someone beautiful, I asked the bride to wear it under her coat. And as she was going to Rome on her honeymoon and I was returning to the suburbs to wrangle a toddler and teach whole classes of unruly teens, I decided that my shawl needed some adventure. So I gave it to her.

something silk, something new, something seaweed, something blue

I can't pretend that it wasn't bittersweet, but there was a sense of rightness to the moment. The romantic in me loves that I walked away having left the bride draped in this new piece of finery I made so proudly.

There may be a picture of me banging a gong with the shawl on (don't ask. Or rather, wait till that entry's up), but there might not be. Maybe I'll get some nice ones from the shawl's new life in Europe.

- 1 comments/hedgehogs -

- Rocketbride's adventure of 9/17/2006 09:07:00 p.m.