Knit Sisters

First the good news. The very good news. I’m getting married next summer to my perfect match, the one I knew was The One the minute I met him. And I don’t even believe in those kinds of instant, instinctual kinds of things.

But yes, it’s true. And in spite of Newsweek’s notorious, backlash warnings 20 years ago (when I was an impressionable 18-year-old) about educated women nearing forty, terrorists, and marriage (I know you know what I’m talking about), I am getting married just a few months after my 39th birthday. Of course, lately Newsweek has said, “Gee, you know, huh, huh, we were wrong about those statistics that said that you had a less than 5% chance of getting married,” but talk about a retraction that comes way too late to do any good! The information has been out there for 20 years, warping women’s lives. Thanks to them, I actually started grad school thinking, “Well this should make me completely unmarriageable, but I accept my fate.”

All I have to say now is, “Go to hell, Newsweek.”

I am happy. I am a statistical anomaly.

My friend Emily has been kind enough to volunteer to go bridal gown shopping with me. Bless her. I find the choices overwhelming and yet, after a while, they all look strangely *alike*. Okay, not entirely fair. There are five types of bridal gown that I have identifed thusfar:

1) Streamlined and sophisticated
2) Giant meringue
3) Could be your Crazy Aunt Erma’s sofa covering
4) Could be Louis XIV’s sofa covering
5) Hootchie-mama

For example, the dress chosen by the latest Mrs. Trump, that $100,000 horror, was an remarkable example of the worst excesses of Bridal Gown Category 3 & 4. It looked like she was a sofa. And here she was, a beautiful woman with all the resources in the world at her command! A terrible pity, really.

Another example: the late Mrs. JFK, Jr. picked a gown squarely in Bridal Gown Category 1. Good work, Caroline, may you rest in peace.

For the bride, like me, who is, as the Russian novelists would delicately put it, “not in her first youth,” (people, I just have to say–I love that phrase) there is really nothing for it but a gown from Category 1. Were I 23, I would seriously consider the Giant Meringue, but a woman not in her first youth in a Giant Meringue is not beautiful, but merely pitiable.

How does this affect my knitting life, though? That is the real question. Well, since our wedding is no longer completely hypothetical, I thought I should start working on my wedding shawl, which you may recognize as River.

If anyone out there doubted the magic of blocking, doubt no more. Like all lace, this piece (unblocked and still on the needles, of course) looks like a pile of noodles. Not exactly inspiring.

The truth is, I hate working with mohair and I am agnostic on knitting lace. But the problem is, I always forget this when I see a nice pattern for a shawl in lace-weight mohair. It seems like such a *good* idea at the time. In reality, I’d always rather knit something like Rogue, preferably in an oily, water-repellent aran weight yarn that enables you to stand by the Irish Sea for hours on end, looking brooding and mysterious. And possibly deeply wronged and dangerous. Not that I am brooding, mysterious, deeply wronged, or dangerous, heaven knows, but I like the idea of a version of myself who is like that.

Knit not for who you are, but for who you want to be!

P.S. As a limited, non-spinner, what are English five-pitch combs? I’ll have to ask my sister.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 8:13 pm and is filed under Bridezilla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.