Work in Progress Wednesday v.99

What. A. Week.  Seriously, you guys... I'm done with drama.  I don't chase it, and I don't live my life in a way that encourages it, and yet it finds me...

As you may remember, Mr. Right is in the middle of a 2-month-long business trip that will end just before our wedding in August.  I stayed at home, making wedding plans, taking care of the dog, and getting ready for a big ol' wedding.  Easy enough.  On Thursday, we are notified that the founder of our parent company is making an unannounced visit.  Bad news.  About an hour later, I speak to Mr. Right, who tells me that the stomach pain he's been having has returned.  I harrass him until he agrees to go to the doctor.

Flas forward a couple of hours...  Mr. Right spends his lunch hour plus 2 more hours waiting to be seen at urgent care.  So much for urgent.  They can't get to him and he has to go back to work.  Meanwhile, in Colorado, our founder arrives, assembles everyone in the conference room, and announces that he's put our division up for sale, that he doesn't really expect anyone to operate us as a going concern, and that he's sorry.  We're all given layoff packages.

At just about that moment in California, Mr. Right's appendix ruptures.  Talk about timing, eh?  He finishes work, goes back to urgent care, gets seen and is immediately trucked over to the hospital for tests.  At just after midnight, they decide to operate right away.  In Colorado, I hang up the phone, say a prayer, and buy a plane ticket for the next flight I can get.  Unfortunately, since he's a bit out of the way, the earliest flight isn't until the next afternoon. 

I've been here ever since. 

There are silver linings, though:

#1 -- He's okay.  The surgery was more involved than usual because of the rupture and the infection and the mess, but he's having a miraculous recovery.  He says, "Hi"...



Why yes, he is high as a kite on painkillers, why do you ask?

#2 -- My last day of work will be one week before our wedding.  This is pretty awesome timing, if there is such a thing. 

#3 -- I haven't talked about it here, but I kind of hate my job and it's been tough to stay in a dying industry.  It's good to have a kick in the pants to start something new.

#4 -- It's pretty here, and while all my friends are cooking in 100+ degree weather in Denver, I'm wearing a fleece because 60 degrees is just a touch chilly for me.  I'll take it.



#5 -- I got some knitting done!  More wedding puffs:



And a tiny bit of progress on my scarf.



It was actually way more progress, but when you knit lace on 90 minutes of sleep you end up tinking.  A lot.  Like 15 or so rows of scarf.  It's a bad idea.  Trust me.

**By the time you read this, I'll be back home, heading off to my soon-to-vanish job and worrying about wedding stuff, which is lots more fun than worrying about life and death.  I'll also be visiting all my WIPW peeps because that's fun.  And I deserve some.


**Okay, not so much.  We made it all the way to the airport, but realized he was too woozy to drive himself back to the hotel.  Another flight change, and now I'm going home on Thursday...

ETA:  Sorry peeps, I completely forgot to announce the winner of the book giveaway.  I'll link up to Yarn Along today to make the announcement, even though I forgot to stick a book in my suitcase and this week's reading has been limited to prescription bottles...

Anyway...Random.org's lovely number generator chose comment # 23, left by Kathy B!  Enjoy your book, Kathy!  I'll drop it in the mail this weekend.

Work in Progress Wednesday v.98

Welcome to Crazytown, folks!  Here, it's WIPW, and I'm planning a lightspeed wedding, knitting more than I really should and hosting a giveaway(!) all at the same time!

Let's knock this out one thing at a time, shall we?  I'm still knitting Nympheas.  I still love it, but I'm ready to be done.  Unfortunately, the scarf is not.  Still growing, though...

And still made of super gorgeous yarn.  Not much to complain about here, for sure.

In other news (this is where the crazy comes in), everyone's been asking if I'm knitting for the wedding.  I keep saying, "Not really.  I don't have a ton of time.  I'm finishing Mr. Right's wedding socks, but that's about it."  After the 3rd or 4th time giving this little speech, I started to feel kind of sad.  And so.

There was thinking.  And since we're having our reception in Mr. Right's back yard, there was also yard work.  Then this:

Look!  An apple tree!  Right next to the gate where everyone will come into the party.  Wouldn't it be cute with something hanging on it?  What could I hang?

Hmm...

I had some lovely red yarn left over from my Hedgerow Socks...

and 2 skeins of Koigu that had planned to be a pair of Hedera Socks and were sacrificed without a backward glance since they were exactly the right shade of blue.

Wedding colors!  Must be fate.  They came together like so:

Puffs!  I am hereby declaring that I will make mumbledy dozen red and blue hexipuffs to hang on the apple tree for our wedding reception.  Afterward, I will lovingly stitch them into the blanket, and we'll have a little bit of our wedding in the quilt.  How sappy and sentimental and awesome and crazy is that?

I've made 2 so far (Yeah.  I know).  It turns out that working the heart chart into the puff sort of pulls it out of the usual hex shape, but I'm trying not to worry too much about that.  It doesn't look terrible, right?

Anyway, I think I can work 8 or 10 of them into my beekeeper's quilt, and maybe I'll organize some sort of puff swap with the rest.  Cross y'er fingers for me!

Speaking of wedding (lucky for you guys I'm having a short engagement and you only have to put up with this nonsense for another 2 months or so)...

Last week, I noted the following details that were in process:

Invitations:  Done!  SO Fun!

Cake:  Decided!  Yay!

Cake Topper:  Done!  Amazing!  See?

(This one's not ours, this awesome artist is making one just for us, with red and blue, of course)

Guest Book:  Decided!  Yay!

Then there was this little pile of stuff that I had NO IDEA how to proceed with:

Flowers:  Done! Being gifted to us by the woman who's sort of been my surrogate mom.  She has A Plan.  And excellent taste. I'm SUCH a lucky girl.

Photography:  Done!  Being gifted to us by the same surrogate mom who's enlisted her former professional photographer son to come out and take pictures of our wedding.  Did I mention LUCKY?

Music:  Still in process, but fingers crossed.  (as an aside:  Total # of songs suggested in last week's comments:  0.  Ah well.)

Finally, I'm also hooking up this week to Yarn Along, because I'm reading an actual book (shocking!).  And it's not just any book...

The Infinite Tides was released yesterday.  It was written by my very old and very awesome friend, Christian Kiefer.  I've known Chris since 7th grade, and he's totally hit it out of the park with his first novel.  According to Publisher's Weekly.  And Kirkus Reviews.  And Booklist.

I'm so happy and excited for my friend that I bought 2 copies of his book.  I'm keeping one of them for ever and ever.  And I'm giving the other one away (to you?)!  To enter, just leave a comment on this entry.  The giveaway is open until 8pm Colorado time, next Tuesday, June 26.  I'll happily ship anywhere in the whole wide world.  Easy peasy!  If you win, and you love the book, I hope you'll give it a little mention on your blog. 

S'all for me this week!  Must. Knit. Puffs!!!

Work in Progress Wednesday v.97

Hey, hey!  It's Wednesday!  Still not a whole lot of time to knit around here, but I did manage to make it to knit night this week (hooray!), and also to squeeze some lunchtime knitting in so there is a tiny bit of progress to report.  Here's how Nympheas looked last week (ps. Better sunlight last week = better colors.  This one's way closer to the acutal):

And here's this week:

Pretty good, all things considered.  I'm still loving knitting this little scarf, but a bit discouraged that it isn't longer.  It doesn't seem like it should take this long to knit up a lacy scarf, does it?  I think having bundled Mr. Right off on his epic business trip yesterday might speed things up a notch or two, but we'll see.

In other news...  We have a wedding date!  It was confirmed on Thursday, and since then we've:

Booked a chapel.  Our church seats about 1000 people, and our wedding will be around 60 so that didn't seem like a great idea.  The church's chapel comfortably holds about 20 so that was out.  They offered us a classroom at the church to get married in but that seemed a little bit depressing.  And so we found the cutest little chapel...

It's adorable, and the perfect size, and the woman who runs it is awesome.  I freaked out (just a smidge) at the price, but then found out how it works.  It includes EVERYTHING for the ceremony.  You got music?  They'll play it (on their lovely surround sound system).  You want music?  They'll supply it.  You have a musician?  They'll set up for him or her.

They supply decorations, including pew bows and flowers in every color imaginable (we're doing ivory), and flowers for the altar and at the entrance.  They'll set it all up, decorate everything, and then take it all down when you're through. 

Oh, and she'll coordinate the ceremony for you too.  This is like my dream come true, and suddenly the fee sounded all kinds of reasonable.  We're in!

Confirmed a date with our pastor.  He's a tough guy to pin down, and usually has a pastor on his staff perform weddings.  But we really wanted him since he's counseled us, and he very kindly agreed.  Yay!

Booked a honeymoon!  We're Costa Rica bound!  The best part is that I had a bajillion or so frequent flyer miles from my last job that I've been saving for a Big Trip.  And this is it!  So we got (very nearly) free plane tickets.  Huzzah!

One of the illustrators I've worked with took her family to Costa Rica a couple of years ago on vacation and told us about this fantastic house they rented.  I'd saved the link, and we've just booked it, too.  It's in the rain forest on the Caribbean side of the country, and just a short walk to the ocean.  It's a bit rustic, but hey!  Jungle!  Ocean!  Monkeys!  I'm totally sold and Mr. Right is a little bit beside himself with glee. 

Registered at Crate & Barrel!  Okay, this is totally silly but I've been waiting pretty much my whole adult life to do that, and it was really, really fun.  I don't even care if any of our guests shops from it, just the act of picking things was a little bit awesome.  Yes, I'm a dork.

In the works this week:  Invitations, Cake, Guest Book,Ccake Topper

Killing me softly because I have NO idea what to do:  Photographer, Music, Flowers.  Suggestions welcome!

Totally cool and unexpected blessing:  Mr. Right's parents have offered to pay for the catering at the reception!  How awesome is that?  We're having a backyard barbecue sort of party with red checked tablecloths and flowers in mason jars.  Also?  Best. Barbecue. Ever.    It's a great gift, and we're both excited about the offer.

Next week, more knitting, less wedding.  Probably.  But maybe not.  In the mean time, please leave ideas for awesome reception songs in the comments, okay?  So far, I have Etta James; At Last, Counting Crows; Accidentally in Love, Johnny Cash; Walk the Line, and a couple of others that escape me at the moment.  Suffice to say, we have pretty eclectic taste.  Whaddaya got for me?

Once you've saved my wedding music, go check out the rest of the WIPW folks.  There's lots o' fabulous crafting going on out there!

Work in Progress Wednesday v.96

Wednesday already?  Yikes.  This week is zipping by at light speed, likely because Mr. Right leaves on Monday for a Two. Month. Long. business trip.  Can I get a Boo(!!!!!!), please?  Yeesh.  Two months is an insanely long time to be apart, especially when you're trying hard to plan a wedding.

On that front, we very nearly have a venue!  And a caterer!  Now all we really, really need is a date.  We're waiting to hear back from our pastor (hopefully today) about a flurry of dates that will work for us in August and September.  I've got fingers and toes (and pretty much everything else) crossed that one of them will also work for him.  We'll see...


Oh.  Knitting!  Right.  I've still not had a bunch of time to sit and knit, especially because my main project is lace.  As in, "Shhh!  I'm counting!  Talk to me later!" kind of lace.  It's pretty though.  See?

And I'm getting faster and less white-knuckled about it as I get the pattern ground into my wee little brain, so that's a plus.

I've also pulled out some socks that I was making a lifetime ago.  At the time, they were known as the Super Secret Socks, and were intended to be delivered to Mr. Right on the morning of our wedding with a note saying, "In case of cold feet."  Instead, they might've been thrown at his head on the afternoon that he broke up with me (Sorry, honey).  Needless to say, they've been in time out through a year of tears, counseling, hard work, reunions and happy endings beginnings.

And now, since we're actually, really for reals going to get married, they've resurfaced.  They're not a surprise this time (see the flinging-at-the-head business, above), and he's very excited to have them.  Bonus:  They fit him perfectly.  What you see here is actually sock #2, so I should have them finished up after one or two lonely evenings on the couch next week.  Silver linings, right?

For the moment, since he's still here and I can, I'm off to spend some time goofing around with my fiance.  And later, I'll head out to visit all the WIPW blogs for more super awesome craftiness.

Cheers!

FO Friday -- Not Quite Dry Edition

Happy FO Friday, y'all!  As promised, I got Narragansett fixed up and blocked this week, but somehow it didn't quite dry until this morning.  And so, what you get is a super quick post, a few cruddy pics and my heartfelt promise to add some details and some better lit photos this evening.  Deal?

I love how this sweater turned out.  The Shepherd's Wool blocked gorgeously and is incredibly soft. (The color is an awesome shade of spring green, contrary to these crap photos -- better coming, promise!)  And warm.  Perhaps a teensy bit too warm for June 1, but let's overlook that little detail, shall we?

The slip stitch cable detail is fun, too.  I like that  it adds a bit of decoration without being fussy.

I followed a fellow Raveler's modification to make the eyelets along the raglan smaller, and I'm glad I did since I think they're plenty visible as it is.  She basically traded a YO in the pattern for an M1,  which worked great.

I also lengthened the arms a smidge, from the recommended 9" to 11".  This worked well for me too, keeping the ribbing off my elbow, which makes me all kinds of happy.

The other change I made was to run a crocheted slip stitch around the inside of the neckline to keep it from falling too far off my shoulders.  If I knit this again, I'd go down a needle size for the neckline to snug things up just a little more, but this tutorial from the Yarn Harlot was hugely helpful.

(I'll upload a pic of this feature tonight, promise!)

And that's it for now as I'm running out the door to work.  Happy weekend!  And happy Fiber Arts Friday, too!