Never-ending Sleeves

I think I mentioned a while back that the latest of my long line of cardigan projects would be the February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne.  I started it and found that the yarn I'm using (Icelandic wool purchased in Icelandisn't the best choice for that pattern. 

Instead, I decided on the Maude Louise cardigan designed by Kristin Hanley Cardozo.  So far so good, but I feel like I've been working on these sleeves forever.  FOREVER!

Ok, maybe not forever

.

Who needs turkey?

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and are now enjoying a relaxing weekend with plentiful leftovers!

The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Part Two

Yes, Part Two. For more on what the Copycat Project is all about, read Part One here.

A Practical Wedding has plenty of readers, so the paltry handful I might steer their way is sure to be a drop in the proverbial bucket in terms of a benefit to Meg, the driving force behind APW. But to the paltry handful themselves, I suspect the benefit will be substantial. I mean really, when has reading intelligent, confident (and witty!) posts that remind you that you're awesome and that anyone saying otherwise is insignificant -- when has that not been beneficial for you? Never? Ok then, go read.



I was prompted to use A Practical Wedding as my second Copycat blog when one of the anchors of the morning news (yes, I know, calling it "news" is a bit of a stretch) said this about the upcoming nuptials of Britain's Prince William and Kate Middleton:

"... he'll have no input on the dress, of course."

*record scratch*

What's this, now? If the bride- and groom-to-be have decided that she'll be choosing her dress independent of all opinions he may have, that's fine. More power to 'em. That's totally their call. The assumptions, though -- and forgive me, but I'm just going out on a limb here and guessing that Ann Curry hasn't popped in for tea and chatted with the happy couple about their wedding planning philosophy -- are what get under my skin: that of course the groom has no interest in what the dress will look like, and everyone knows that men are useless when it comes to weddings, and obviously, even if he did have some thoughts on elaborate dress vs. simple dress, his opinion doesn't matter because hers is the one that counts. Because she's the briiide.

Even with all the sarcasm, it still sort of gave me the heebie-jeebies just typing that. Who's with me?

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!

I've been forced to acquire a new level of tolerance for typographical errors by virtue of the surroundings at my workplace.  I spend much of my day reading emails full of misspellings, instant messages with an alarming consonant-to-vowel ratio, and printed materials serving as cautionary tales on why spellcheck alone can't save you from yourself.  Careless errors -- particularly in venues where carelessness should not be present -- still irk me, and I've likely bored my coworkers on more than one occasion by sharing an exceptionally humorous (to me) typo, but for the most part I've realized that I kind of have to let it go.

What I saw this evening after I left work, though, was more than my little grammarian brain could handle.  I stopped at a gas station, pulled up to one of the pumps, and approached the automated screen. 

It asked if I wanted to use a "fule rewards card."

Seriously.

The Sincerest Form of Flattery: Part One

I realized last week that my list of blog links (for the two of you not reading through Google Reader, please direct your attention to the left margin) is woefully out of date... and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Until I get myself in gear and revise it (more often than not, I'm posting from my phone), I'll have to spread the word about the fun blogs I frequent some other way, and I'm super excited about the idea I came up with to accomplish that.

Enter the Copycat Project.

I write about a fairly broad range of topics. (To those of you who miss the days when this was more of a traditional knitblog, I apologize. Also: please come back, ok?) I'll be using this disjointed, haphazard nature to my advantage -- aha! play to your strengths! or at least, to your unavoidable characterisitcs! -- and perhaps broadening my horizons as well, as I take a page from a fellow blogger, write a post of my own that ties in with the subject matter of their site, and link back to them so you all can enjoy their stuff done right. By them.

Make sense?

Ok, first up: Kelly over at Tearing Up Houses. Let me be clear: I'm focusing on a very distinct subset of her posts to imitate. I've not recently knocked out any walls or purchased any real estate (all of which is fascinating to read about, though). No, no, I'll be tapping into her charmingly random pet portrait concept.

And so, I present to you the Great Furry Peace Summit of 2010:



Not much happened after this photo was taken... which is exactly how it should always be.

Hopping on the Home Brew Bandwagon

We're many things, Best Ever Husband and I, but cutting-edge isn't one of them. It seems like everyone and their brother's been brewing beer lately -- or perhaps we just surround ourselves with especially awesome peeps
? -- and we jumped into the fray only recently.

The pints you see above are our inaugural brew, a porter. We brought a few bottles to a gathering at a friend's house, where it was given the name Dark Horse Porter (much better than its default moniker: From-a-Kit Porter). Dark Horse suits it nicely, actually; it's quite good, and I had set my expectations, shall we say, not decidedly high.

Our sophomore effort is brewing as we speak, and this time around we've got the name ready in advance: Christmas Cookie Ale. Take a kit for nut brown ale, add some vanilla and cinnamon, and (hopefully) you've got a tasty beverage that'll be ready just in time for the holidays.

Pretend you're reading this yesterday...

I'm wearing my new favorite pendant today, an iridescent seashell (I'm guessing) in a silver setting.  I love the look of it, but what really propels it to favorite status is its source.  One of my closest friends bought it for me when she was serving in the army overseas (yes, I should have posted this on Veterans Day) because she thought I'd like it.  Really, how thoughtful is that?!   Brave and driven and thoughtful and perceptive (she really was on target in thinking the pendant is just my style)...  I'm so lucky to have her as a friend.  And, of course, we're all lucky to have her and her colleagues working and fighting and putting their lives on hold for the sake of the greater good.

The cake. Oh, the cake! (and other wedding food...)

My mother outdid herself. The six test cakes she slaved over (of which at least two were multi-tiered) were worth the effort. The frosting was perfectly executed, and the cake topper took about as much money, time, and effort as I think any cake topper should take (which is to say, very little), but still managed to be a perfect visual addition.

More importantly, the cake was delicious. Like, the venue staff was amazed how little was left at the end of the night, it was so delicious. I know for a fact that one bridesmaid had three slices (if that's not validation of yummy cake, I don't know what is). Said bridesmaid's husband also apparently had a hilarious conversation with my mother wherein he caused her to be thoroughly flustered -- and likely red as a boiled lobster -- because of 1) well-deserved compliments on the cake, and 2) profanity for emphasis as to just how very impressed he was. Mom's a little faint of heart with the language...



During the reception, The Amazing Husband and I each had about as much cake as one can eat in the time it takes a group of family and friends to snap a few photos. Not surprisingly, we didn't really consume much of the non-cake food while mingling and dancing and taking in the evening, either. I suppose we could have set up a table for us to make sure we got some sustenance, but then we would have missed out on a lot of really fun conversations and interactions with our nearest and dearest. (Plus, everyone would have been watching us eat. No thanks.) The Amazing Husband, it should be noted, needs vast quantities of nutrition to appease his overachieving metabolism, so just "not eating" wasn't really a good way to go.

What's a freshly married couple to do?

You book your wedding at a venue where the staff is so awesome, they'll pack up leftovers for you (and surprise you with two complete, unrequested meals, in case the leftovers aren't sufficient) and let you hang out with your spouse in the industrial kitchen after the festivities have ended, eating phyllo-wrapped asparagus, priscutto-wrapped grilled peaches, and pieces of mangled wedding cake with your fingers. And you talk and you laugh and you rehash the previous ten hours, and you enjoy the most memorable meal of your entire life.

That's what you do.

Super Secret Gift Knitting

If you hadn't already surmised, the super secret gift knitting project I spent the late winter and spring working on was wedding related: I knit a shawl for each of the lovely women who served as my attendants.  That photo up there shows the finished product, an aggregate twenty-plus feet of shawl.  The photo quality leaves a bit to be desired, but take my word for it that they're a nice shade of pale pink, to coordinate with chocolate brown dresses. 

There actually wasn't much need for the shawls at the wedding (as we had pretty much perfect weather), but hopefully they'll be worn and enjoyed for years to come.  I certainly enyoyed making them... Any moments of monotony (I'll admit, it was an awful lot of stockinette) were more than worth the looks on my friends' faces when I was finally able to give these puppies to their rightful owners. 

Eventful Morning

The gubernatorial race is still too close to call, so that's definitely not what I'm talking about.

Nope, the morning was eventful for an entirely separate reason (unless you consider a symbolic connection, if you believe the natural world has an awareness of current events as well as a bitingly sarcastic sense of humor).



If you look closely, on and next to the fence, those are wild turkeys. There were six of them walking across our neighbor's yard this morning, but all but those two had become shy by the time I grabbed my camera.



I also learned, despite my previous assumptions (based on what exactly, I'm not sure), that wild turkeys are capable of flight.



Hmmm. Who else is ready for Thanksgiving? I feel a sudden desire to incorporate cranberry sauce into tonight's dinner...

So the flowers worked out ok after all.

Hey, guess what I realized? If I wait until I can post organized, logically mapped out thoughts about the wedding, it'll nearly be our first anniversary before I get to share any part of that fantastic day. Haphazard and lighthearted and interspersed with other posts it is!

I mentioned a few times that our hope was to grow our own flowers. It went about half according to plan, but the result ended up being just what we needed and (didn't know we) wanted. It wasn't the best year ever for flower growing: a lot of dry, sunny days went a long way towards a fun summer for people, but a less pleasant time for thirsty plants. Thankfully zinnias, cosmos, anemones, and sedum are drought tolerant, so we had a sizeable crop of those to decorate the reception tables.







The bottles, incidentally, came with the house I bought in 2005. They were on a bookshelf in the basement, and they were covered in dirt (some of their more stubbornly filthy friends weren't included in the decor). I'm very glad that my internal packrat insisted on salvaging them when I sold that house about a year prior to the wedding, although the idea to use them this way didn't come up until months later. The table runners have been used in two friends' weddings already, and I was excited to continue their tradition, too.

We didn't end up growing quite enough flowers to create five respectable (whatever that means) bouquets, so a friend and I spent part of the morning touring grocery store floral departments hunting for things in pale pink and white. We were prepared for a grand adventure, but we only needed to visit two stores, where we grabbed a few armfuls of pink carnations, pink roses, baby's breath, white spider mums, white daisies, white roses, and these gorgeous, delicate (and maddeningly unlabeled) white flowers with mauve speckles.

One of the few regrets I have about the wedding in general is that I don't have any photos of the bouquet assembly process. A bridesmaid and I weilded some fierce floral tape and wrapped, wrapped, wrapped our way to what I think were some pretty awesome bouquets, and a friend of The Awesome Husband used her skills as a former floral shop employee to cover the stems in brown ribbon. Here they are hanging out on the cake table while everyone danced and mingled. (Note: the cake topper is made of grocery store flowers, too; my mom stuck a bunch of rose buds in a half-circle of floral foam.)



While I didn't jump on the two-dress bandwagon, I *did* have three bouquets. Sort of. I created my bouquet as three small, separate bouquets that I carried together as one. I figured the best way to hand off my flowers during the reception (bouquet toss? no thanks. given to the winner of a dance-off for all the married couples? awkward, given the crowd. languishing, ignored, on a table? passable, but anticlimactic.) would be to give them to the demographic that would most appreciate them: there were three little girls in attendance between the ages of 4 and 6. And so, I made three mini-bouquets that looked like one bouquet.

The monolith being carried back down the aisle.

My cousin's daughters enjoying their respective third each.

And that's how we ended up with semi-home-grown flowers for the wedding. Blooms, floral tape, ribbon, and seeds for planting couldn't have totalled more than $100, and the result was perfectly suited to the day.