Blanket Square: Done

I finally finished the blanket square I have been avoiding like the plague in favor of more urgent wedding planning or condo related activities. It is for an online knitting group that gives ideas for using up your stash odds and ends, and I was supposed to use worsted weight yarn. However, the only ww I have on hand is P&C, and I hate the idea of making a blanket square from dishcloth cotton, so I used a bulkier yarn. It's probably acrylic but nice and blanket snuggly, and hopefully it's ok.

I used a dishcloth pattern with twisted, cable-like columns, but a smaller gauge needle then I would normally use for this bulky a yarn to get the size the required 7x7 inches. I think alot of the pattern is indiscernable between the kind of tight knitting and the color varigation, but I'm sure once it's just a patch in a blanket it will be fine.

What I've been doing

I have not been knitting. I've gotten sper involved in my first real fantasy series (You can't really count Harry Potter or Eragon, can you?) which is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. I'm almost through the first book and I definintely should have waited until after the wedding to start a book series. So I've been splitting my time between reading punctuated by housework and wedding stuff.

I have started a knitted square to be made into a blanket, and the deadline to mail it in is this week, so I'll have to get on that.

I finally made it to another group run and did 10 miles with my old marathon training buddy Silvie, who, just like old times provided me with water and energy beans during the run. Ten miles is my longest run in quite a few months, and it was ok until after I finished. After a quick hop in the lake, a lovely Lake Champlain post run benefit, we always go for breakfast. I must have not been hydrated enough, or maybe I should have eaten something before my run, but in any case I turned quite ghostly and could not eat my bagel. But after a few quality hours of couch time with Robert Jordan and quite a bit of water ameliorated my semi-sickness. I just wish I knew exactly what made me feel sick so I can avoid it in the future.

Invitations made? Check!

The palms of my hands are bruised from the embosser/paper cutter. Three hours of embossing, cutting, stamping, labeling, assembling, ribbon tying, sealing wedding invitations with the help of two fantastic friends and margaritas. What would I do without my friends?

Be very insane.

Being that those 3 hours took me close to midnight, I was very happy that I had my 6:15am running date with Maria, otherwise, it would've been a snooze-y kind of morning for me.

The anti-bride

This past weekend was a planted fake event so that my bridal shower was a surprise. And surprise it was. One of Matt's aunts is a quilter, and made us a quilt out of Matt's mother's wedding gown, and Matt's grandmother's wedding gown, and incorporated purple, my bridesmaid's dress colors. It is beautiful and it made me cry. They also managed to find a gorgeous heirloom linen pillowcase that has my initials cross stitched in.
In order to surprise me, the future in laws planted 3 fake events. After the shower they told me about them and were like, "Aren't you happy? You don't have to travel to MA all these weekends!" But....I'm planning a wedding, so I had scheduled meetings with weddings vendors every weekend I was supposed to be down. So the first half of my week was spent desperately trying to reschedule and free up at least one weekend, which I have managed to do.

The other wedding thing that has been keeping me busy (besides trying to find homes for my shower gifts, the thank you writing process, etc.) is that I am sadly behind in the invitation making process, so much so that my friends are going to have to help me tonight. Matt and I are notoriously stingy, so the idea of a Michael's diy invite kit seemed like it would save so much money. But we don't own a printer, and we don't even have parent's that own working printers, so Matt's had to take our invites to work and print it there.

I have started knitting a square for a blanket that I'm mailing for one of my groups, but until the invites are mailed, that is my only concern.
It almost makes me thankful to have these 3+ hour drives down 89 to Massachusetts. I have plenty of time to knit, as long as I make Matt drive.

I know some people love planning their weddings, but I am neither good at it, nor all that interested in picking songs and making place cards and deciding which friends you have room to invite and all the other random details. It was as if, once I found my dress, I expected everything to take care of itself, and the fact that there was so much more to deal with just became an annoyance. Picking registry items? Not fun. So not fun, that when my china pattern was cancelled I thought to myself, how often will this get used, and even more importantly, how often will klutzy me want to hand wash and handle all my really expensive and breakable items?Am I alone here? I'm not a bridezilla, maybe I'm an anti-bride?

Wordless Friday

Baby bib done!

I finished knitting this awhile ago, but I just managed to get to a craft store to buy the button today. I was going to go cheap and just use an extra, but someone posted a finished bib with a football, and it was so cute I couldn't help myself. Matt had the idea of embroidering "Chew-chew!" onto it, to match the train button, but it turns out that my embroidery skills leave much to be desired. I am considering blocking it, since it's a bit lopsided and uneven in some places, but I've never blocked anything before...so I guess it all depends on my motivation.


The boy booked our honeymoon itinerary today. Two weeks in Greece, including a few days on Mykonos, a few days on Santorini, and a few days around Athens. I found out right after a dentist appointment, so my enthusiasm was stifled by my aching gums. Did you ever wonder why dentists, or dental hygenists, always try to carry conversations with you while their hands are in your mouth? Why would you do that? Do you want to get your hand chewed up?

I'm hoping that in October, once my wedding has flown by as a perfectly executed, stress-free event (haha) I'll have tons of pictures to post that will look like that only prettier and with way cooler ancient structures around me. Maybe I'll take a knitting project with me...

Knitting to classical music

Last night I volunteered to do parking for Mozart and I realized why I usually never volunteer during weeknights. I am exhuasted. It's not that my day job is so intellectually stimulating or demanding, it's just that after work, I want to relax and knit and have a nice dinner. Maybe had I not had to walk into my mess of boxes and stuff for the past week, I would have more energy, but walking into this mess that has no home yet is just....exhuasting.

The concert was at a small but cute venue up in the islands, and there were alot of us parkers and not alot of cars. Which made the parking time crawl. But the concert was nice and relaxing once the time came. And being alone, I got a decent amount of knitting done and am almost finished with the baby bib. I also got some great ideas from a Get Stitchy forum about some simple embroidery I can sew on tio make it not so plain and boring when the time comes.

It's a good thing I only do small projects, because I knit about as fast as a turtle runs :)