Wedding Bells

So it's been weeks since I got back from Minnesota and I never got a chance to tell you about the actual WEDDING.

There were two whole days of primping beforehand. We got our nails done on Saturday.

On Sunday the wedding party did hair. I got a little emotional when Chelsea put on her veil.



The ceremony was in Chel's folks' backyard. Everything was lovely and I think Chelsea and family and friends put in a ton of work to get it all so perfect. Chelsea and Jeff were married with a view of a calm lake behind them. The sun was high in the sky and quite warm, really and I used the wedding program to alternately shade my eyes and give myself a little breeze.

Directly after the ceremony, the wedding folk ran off to take a million photographs

and the rest of us found our way to our seats for dinner.

All the flowers were from the local farmer's market and assembled by one of Chelsea's friends. I think our centerpiece was the prettiest.

Brett and I had a wonderful time.


And it was great to see all my girls again.


We left the dinner in the garden and headed to the Five Event Center in Minneapolis for drinks and dancing.



I hope Chelsea and Jeff enjoyed their party as much as we all did. It was a great way to celebrate an amazing love.

I will tell you one thing. That Doctor Who show gets it absolutely right. For real, yo.

Traveling Sock

On our journey to the Land of a Thousand Lakes, I started a pair of socks for mindless downtime knitting, in the grand tradition of the Yarn Harlot's traveling sock.

Brett and I left New York Wednesday afternoon bright eyed and bushy tailed with two (matching) suitcases, snacks, and two skeins of Koigu KPPPM and a set of US2 DPNs.



About a hundred miles down the road I was still working on the finishing repeats in Chels's garter, so I didn't get to work on the socks until we were almost to Pennsylvania. I cast on 8 stitches with a Magic Cast On and finished the toe increases in a hotel room in Mentor just outside Cleveland.


The next day we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though the sock went, I couldn't get any pictures inside the hall as cameras are forbidden. Boo to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
I did pick up a souvenier button though, which I think becomes the sock very well.


Cleveland is a very pretty city, really, right on the water with all those fancy pants sky scrapers.

The heel turn came conveniently when we stopped for the night in Clarendon Hills at Mom and Dad's.


We stopped at a rest stop in Wisconsin that seredipitously turned out to be in Aldo Leopold Territory, which was very appropriate considering I was meeting up with college friends who all read the Sand County Almanac with me in Freshman Studies.


When we stopped at the Minnesota border, the first of the pair was nearly done.


In Minnesota Kate put some stitches into the sock and Chels put some stitches into it too. I bound off the first of the pair at the bachelorette while playing Bridal 20 Questions.


On Saturday, the sock went to visit TCF Bank Stadium where the jumbo screen was showing Minnesota playing Syracuse and we got to watch the Gophers win (while we were) at their beautiful new stadium.

I intended to have pictures of the second sock at the reception and forgot to put it in my purse when we left. Major bummer.


I knit it back through Wisconsin and stopped at the Illinois welcome center for a photo op of the sock on my native soil.

Again, turned the heel at Mom and Dad's where Grandma and Aunt Karen put some stitches into the sock too and then I knit knit knit all the way home. Cast off a day or two after we got back to NY.

So very productive, though now I'm being politely reminded that there are still a pair of KC socks languishing on my needles...

Pros and Cons

Hard Things:

A) The pets have been pretty badly behaved since we got back from the trip and I don't know what the trouble is, other than they don't have as much room to screw around in now that we're in the smaller house. Honus has been especially rowdy, picking on Abby just for fun, and confronting Chester at inappropriate hours of the morning. We need to do more running.

B) I got used to staying in a beautiful house, sleeping in a beautiful bed, having my beautiful friends close at hand and feeling ok spending a little more money than usual over the vacation and it is hard to return to reality.

C) Pretty much everything is still boxed and a total mess. I can't walk around without tripping on something and I can't find anything I need when I need it.


Good Things:

A) I have tons of knitwear ideas bouncing around my skull. In MN, I went to a real yarn store and I felt the Knitting Spirit move me. On vacation I finished a pair of socks and now I want to do a whole bunch more. I'm imagining a big wooly sweater with long sleeves, a zipper, cables, and a hood. How about a few pairs of solid socks in subtle stitch patterns? A matching hat and colorwork mitten set. A pair of argyle socks. A colorwork sweater solid enough to wear as a fall coat...

B) Mom and Karen and I found a beautiful wedding dress and we bought it. So I can cross that off the wedding list.

C) I'm about to have about 20 extra hours a week to work out and cook and plan wedding stuff and volunteer at a local museum and get Penelope Fiberworks off the ground. This is a Very Good Thing.

lace diamonds

I am back in NY. It is good to be with the pets and good to have access to all of my things and nice to not be running around or sitting in a car.

But the trip was great and it's hard to go back to day to day life after such a fantastic vacation. Blog coverage of the event shall be in two parts.

To whet you appetite a bit let's start with that heirloom lace.

I suggested a while back that I might knit a garter for Chelsea's wedding. That perhaps it would be purple and silk.

Well, living in the backwoods of NY cut down my yarn options, and I went with white merino wool instead of purple silk, but I did knit a garter for Chelsea. Even better, it fit. And best of all she wore it proudly.

Chelsea's Diamonds

Project Specs~

Yarn: Laceweight Merino Wool

Needles: My superslick Addi Turbo US 0s circular needle. The needles were probably a little too slick for the work I was doing. There were at least half a dozen instances where either Abby or Brett, or (yes) I myself jerked a needle a little too hard and pulled out all my stitches.

Pattern: My own design, just for Chels, based on a lace design published in a free download by Interweave, first published in the January/February 1997 issue of PieceWork. The lace edging I used was romantically titled Rule 58 Lace Edging, originally from Florence Home Needle-work published in 1887 by Nonotuck Silk Company. I used this pattern for the bottom half of the lace, ran a pair of (YO, K2tog) down the middle so I could lace a ribbon through the garter, and I did a very simple eyelet on the upper ruffle for a little bit of garter stitch calm in the storm of all those lace diamonds.

Size: About 30 inches of lace, gathered to fit the bride.

Reflections: Writing my own chart for this pattern absolutely saved my life. No way would I have ever finished if I needed to read the instructions for every row. Probably would have slipped the first stitch on the eyelet side for a more perfect edging. Would have chosen a more easily memorized pattern so that I could work on it without toting the pattern with me, but for heirloom lace, putting in the extra effort made perfect sense.

I felt rushed to get this done, mostly due to bad project timing thanks to un-lace related life stuff, and next wedding I'll need to make sure I have it done about a week ahead of time so I can give some thought to the blocking, finishing, and presentation. The last stitches in this went into it on the road to the Minnesota and the last blocking pin came out about an hour before I gave it to the bride. She seemed please though, and a gift knitter couldn't ask for anything more.