How do I love thee? Let me count the stitches

Tag : knitted sock

Knitting started innocently enough for Macdonnell, 34, but soonscarves and socks just weren't enough. People couldn't have babiesfast enough to keep up with her deluge of booties and sweaters. Itwasn't long before she'd kicked it up a notch and family andfriends were casually hinting that a nice fisherman's cable-knitpullover would make an awfully swell gift. When her fiancé ArrasHopkins proposed, she knew there was only one mountain left toclimb: With a click of her needles, she began ascending theyarnoholic's Everest: her own wedding dress.
The dress -- a fitted empire-waist, halter-top with a V-neckpearl-beaded bodice and six-inch train -- took six months tocomplete. Part of the reason for the lengthy time (besides caringfor her two-year-old son Cameron, stage-managing the play Plan B atthe GCTC and planning her wedding) was the absence of wedding dresspatterns. And when Macdonnell finally stumbled across one in aknitting magazine, she found the proportions to be less thanforgiving.
Knitting patterns, she noted wryly, aren't free of "supermodelsyndrome," and real bodies need not apply. With no options, shewould have to pull the pattern from her head.
She began with the train, the most difficult and intricate pattern.Knitted in a lace-leaf motif (or mo-leaf, as her sister Anne calledit), the train took the better part of the winter to complete. Theskirt followed and was finished fairly quickly. Building the bodiceproved to be the biggest headache.
Macdonnell wanted crocheted edging to soften the lines of theV-neck and the mo-leaf detail to repeat at the back, but with nopattern to consult and unable to do a proper fitting until a piecewas completed, the bodice came together and unravelled almost halfa dozen times before she found something that worked. Like Penelopein Homer's The Odyssey, she wove it together and pulled it apart. Aweek and a half before the wedding, she almost threw it on thebonfire after unravelling it for a third time. Luckily, awell-timed call from Hopkins talked her down from the ledge. Andlike all good pieces of theatre, the dress began to behave and camemysteriously together after that dark night of the knitter's soul.