Marianne's Romantic Bookmark by Carolyn Joan

Marianne's Romantic Bookmark

Knitting
May 2012
Lace ?
22 stitches and 39 rows = 4 inches
in Lace Chart
US 3 - 3.25 mm
150 - 200 yards (137 - 183 m)
3" wide by 24.5" long
English
This pattern is available in print for $6.50.
Errata available: knittingdaily.com

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
—William Shakespeare

I was inspired to design this bookmark thinking about Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby reciting this sonnet to each other in the 1995 film version of Sense and Sensibility. The edging is meant to look like the waves of the tempest, yet the arrows point in one direction as in “never shaken,” love is “an ever fixed mark.” This fairly simple lace pattern uses many of the basic lace stitches and includes beading making it the perfect introduction to lace knitting or
beaded lace.