For the love of Niki and David

Last weekend I had the absolute honour of being present at the wedding of my beautiful friend Niki and her beloved David. As you may know, I'm quite partial to the old wedding celebration, but this one was extra-super-special and extra-super-loved-up, partly because Niki's one of the most beautiful people I've ever met, and partly because Niki and David have waded through a ton of heartbreak and tragedy this year, so a celebration of their enduring love was a pretty special thing to be a part of.

David in classic tux, Annie in brand-new hair and Niki in vintage pink

But what to make for such an amazing occasion? To be honest, I actually suffered from quite extreme crafter's block on this one. It seemed like there was nothing I could possibly make that could convey my feelings about their wedding and about them as individuals and how much I love them. I was stumped.

But I kept coming back to an image I had from a story Niki had told me about how much Lucien loved watching birds and leaves moving in the sunlight. While Niki and David's wedding was obviously about Niki and David, it was also beautifully and oh so poignantly about their little Lucien, so my wedding gift to them needed to honour him in some way.

And so I set to work crocheting them a little Lucien-love-bird, and I thought of him, and them, with every stitch I made and yes, many tears were shed.

The yarn was bought from an awesome "one-woman, one-cat" yarn and fibre studio based in Melbourne called Yarn vs Zombies and is hand-dyed in a colour scheme called 'outback rainbow', which just totally reminded me of Niki.

The lichen twig is from our land, and the heart was cut from a piece of wool felt which was shorn, dyed and felted by our friend Tabitha, using wool from her sheep.

It was important for me to not only hand make them a gift, but to include lots of things that had a personal connection to us and our land. I don't see Niki nearly as much as I'd like to, on account of the combined tyranny of distance and busy lives, so I like to give her little bits and pieces of 'me'. Also, Niki and I spent some super-fun and super-treasured times camping on the land (and hanging farm-gates in the rain with nothing more than a bush-saw and a ton of determination) long before we'd even moved to Bega.

I also made them a little crochet-monogram-wedding-cushion, like Jemima and Bhavani's (to be honest, I think this is going to be a wedding gift tradition from me from here on in) but I strangely forgot to take a photo of it before I gave it to them. 

But let's face it: the bird is really the main event, though it's only a teeny-tiny and, quite frankly, profoundly inadequate representation of the immense love and admiration I have for Niki and David: YOU. GUYS. ROCK. And I love you to bits.