The FOlio: The Truth about Knitting a Wedding Shawl
In the FOlio, I reflect on a finished knitting object and what the process of knitting it taught me.
Pattern : aquarius (Designer Website Link)
Designer: ash alberg, sunflower knits (@sunflowerknit on Instagram)
Yarn Used : KimDyes Yarn Sugar Cookie Sparkle Sock in Lady Cora (currently only available in miniskeins)
Knit from : May to September 2019
Lesson: Wedding crafts are worth it if you stay focused on what YOU want them to be.
When you are a knitter, there is quite often an expectation that, should you choose to get married, you will knit some aspect of your wedding outfit. Some knitters go the extra mile and knit an actual wedding dress; some keep it simple and knit a tie, a pair of socks, or a small accessory. But probably the most common handknit item at weddings is a bridal shawl.
When my husband and I got engaged, I absolutely wanted to incorporate some crafty elements, but I also wanted to make sure I didn’t overcommit. I was at the time about 18 months removed from a major health issue and it was still common for me to need several days of recovery if I had been really active (and I anticipated running around town to plan a wedding would require some extra activity). So my plan was not only to keep my crafted wedding items low, but to make them pieces I could easily cut out of the plan and replace with a purchased item if I couldn’t finish them.
I may discuss some of the non knitted items I crafted in a future blog post, but for hand knitted items my plan was just two: a shawl for myself and a pair of socks for my fiancée. I purchased yarn for both at Vogue Knitting Live in NYC in January of 2019, with 9 months before the wedding date in October. The socks never even got cast on, but the shawl did get finished even though it took me 5 months. (Lesson Number 1 for Knitting a Wedding Shawl: always give yourself more time than a normal project would take— you’ll have a lot of other tasks to do!)
As you may have noticed from the photos accompanying this post, I did not pick the traditional white or cream yarn – but I also did not have a traditional white or cream dress. (As a lover of color, I’ve never wanted a white wedding dress; for a while I considered a color like rose or teal, but when I actually started thinking about it I decided on gold – and then also wound up with the sparkliest gold dress I could find.) I already had the dress and my fiancée and I had already decided on a plummy purple, gold, and gray as our color palette when I went to VKL with the express goal of finding yarn for these projects. The Kim Dyes Yarn booth and the Lady Cora colorway caught my eye immediately (seriously, I think it was the second booth I stepped into and the first purchase I made). Plus it sparkled!
Probably the trickiest part of the entire project was picking the pattern. I spent hours browsing Ravelry for shawl patterns, some extremely elaborate lace and some more simple. The luckiest break I got was that there had only been three skeins of Lady Cora at VKL for me to purchase, which meant I didn’t have the yarn to get overly ambitious and do a full circle shawl. Eventually I found myself gravitating to ash alberg’s amazing shawl patterns (definitely click the link and browse their website). I first bought the simple but elegant loam pattern and even started it, but it wasn’t quite working with my variegated yarn because you couldn’t see enough of the lace or texture variation (it would make a lovely traditional white or cream wedding shawl). Then I stumbled on their zodiac patterns and started warming to the idea of making a pattern named after a sign associated with the wedding in some way. Libra (covering the date of the wedding), and Pisces (my zodiac sign) weren’t quite the shawl designs I had in mind (although I have plans to make Pisces at some point as I think it would be amazing in a warm, jewel toned tonal yarn). But Aquarius, my fiancee’s zodiac sign, was perfect – with a simple and large enough texture that it wouldn’t get lost in the colors of the yarn. It even had optional beads in the cast off edge for extra sparkle!
Because this was my wedding shawl, I did do a swatch for this shawl. My swatch wasn’t just testing gauge but also how the stitch pattern looked AND how my three individual skeins differed from each other. The three skeins I had were all very different in terms of color distribution, with one mostly brown skein, one mostly pink and purple skein, and one kind of in the middle. Because the shawl itself has striped sections, I decided to do the lace in the lighter parts of the yarn and the garter stitch sections in the darker sections – which does make a fun subtle striping you can see if the shawl is spread out, but is less noticeable while being worn normally.
I found some amazing beads at Michael’s that matched the shawl exactly – unfortunately I did not buy enough of them (I followed the pattern recommendation but I had to eliminate about 10% of the beads in each package because their holes were too small to fit the yarn through), and by the time I realized I would be short, they no longer had the exact same beads. I was able to get a close enough substitute and mix them in with the others so there wasn’t a noticeable change line but learn from my mistake if you’re beading your shawl and either count very carefully or buy extra.
The rounder clear beads are the ones I had to add in (the original set included multifaceted clear beads along with the brown and amber ones).
The last obstacle to the wedding shawl was something I couldn’t control. The shawl was not intended for me to wear during the indoor ceremony; part of our reception was outside and we were taking our photos in the Central Park Conservatory garden, so it was supposed to be a way to keep warm in the fall weather. However, we were having a very warm September in NYC that year and the entire time I was fussing over the beaded bind off (which was very tedious, especially when you’re on a deadline and trying to finish up several other wedding planning projects) it was over 85 degrees. The Tuesday before our wedding it was 95. I wondered if I had just done a ton of work for no reason.
And then, the morning of our wedding, a cool, autumnal 65 degrees blew in (by nightfall it was chilly enough that most people went out on the terrace at our reception to take a photo and then came right back in). The shawl was absolutely needed for both our photos and any time I stepped outside. And it was glorious.
The thing I love most about my wedding shawl is that, as sparkly as it is, by knitting it in sock yarn it’s sturdy enough for every day wear, and I do wear it all the time, beginning with the day after my wedding, when I wore it to the planned wedding party outing to our favorite park in NYC, Governor’s Island. Instead of being a precious heirloom tucked away after the wedding, it’s my go to late spring/early fall shawl and every time I put it on I get to remember my wedding day.
Me and my aunt the day after the wedding.
There’s nothing wrong with knitting a lovely, laceweight cobweb heirloom shawl if that’s your dream for your wedding, but don’t be afraid to go in another direction if it’s better suited to the kind of wedding (and shawl) YOU want. It will make the stress of knitting under a deadline much more bearable if the end product is not a compromise.
Have you knit something for a big life event? How did it go?