Another post! Yippee! At long last here is the saga of the Wedding Shawl (no longer from Hell, as it was finished on time and was a rousing success). Hope that isn't giving too much away.

To recap:
After the lengthy trial and selection process, buying lots of patterns and yarns that went unused, the bride decided on Fiddlesticks Lily of the Valley stole and was convinced to have it made up in an icy blue shade, since natural white yarn was never going to match a wedding dress made of white synthetic fabircs. I ordered two likely shades of Alpaca Cloud from Knitpicks (since the monitor colors were so different from the catalog photos that once again I could not tell which was the color I really wanted, and time was running out). I settled on Horizon Heather, which looks to be a strand of white plyed with a strand of very mildly varying pale blue. I was really tempted by some of the Colourmart yarns and their colors, but I just could not afford the time (and the possibility that on arrival the color would be wrong). I took their advice, however, and got myself a copy of the Online Auction Color Guide, so now I am ready for the next time (all my sisters are married now, so I probably won't need to do this again until my daughters are old enough).

The knitting itself took almost exactly one month. I loved the pattern - a fourteen row repeat, easy to memorize and to read off the knitting I'd already done. I took care of the dreaded "nupps" by keeping a size 1 DPN handy (usually tucked in my hair) for any nupp that I couldn't just purl off with the needles the shawl was on (a size 4 bamboo circular). I had hoped to use something pointier, like my Knitpicks Options or an Addi, but the alpaca seemed too slippery, and I think the time I might have saved on the nupps would have been used up chasing dropped stitches.

As is my usual sort of modus operandi, I finished the knitting itself at about 2:00 am Saturday morning of the wedding. I spent the whole car ride from Massachussetts to Ohio knitting, plus lots of other time the week before, but some of my precious knitting time was taken up by shopping (flower girl dress for my daughter, slips for everyone, etc.) and general fun (taking the adults out for an annual birthday dinner, things like that).


I finished blocking at about 5:00 am. By the time I got up at 8:00ish to start driving people places (hairdresser and the like) the shawl was dry so I could unpin it and deliver it. My sister gamely wore it to the church (fastened with the Leslie Wind shawl pin I gave her) and posed for photos, but then folded it away since the day turned out to be beautiful and not cold enough to require its use. I know that if I had not knitted it, or not gotten it finished, the wedding day would have been gray and chilly!