I'm back!

Just a quickie today, obviously I’ve been incredibly busy over the last few weeks but now I’m all married and back from honeymoon I can start getting on top of this blog.  But for today I’ll leave you with a few pics from my wedding.  It was an absolutely glorious day and everything went so smoothly, it was marvellous!

Yep, my bouquet is bound with Rowan Big Wool!

Boredom

With a month to go until my wedding I was forced to assess my progress on my wedding shrug and had to admit that progress had been smidge slow.  Even with the wedding looming I was finding it difficult to motivate myself to knit more endless rows of stockinette.  So I decided to put a reward system in place.  For each 'pattern repeat' completed (i.e 23 rows stockinette, 3 short rows) I was allowed a short break to spin in.  This may have been effective had this not happened just before I finished my first repeat.

2 cats, 2 immobilised people!

Clearly I was not going anywhere, so I just kept on knitting and have finally finished the main body of the shrug.

I made a circle!

Now I just have to do the back pieces, the pattern has them half lace and half stockinette but as soon as I decided to knit this I knew that would bug me and would have to do all lace or all stockinette.  With time shortening I've plumped for the stockinette - boring but at least I can just knit and knit with no need for concentration so hopefully it'll be done in no time.

Knitstalgia?

If it seems like I haven’t  really been knitting much lately then you are not at all mistaken.  I don’t really feel bad about this, I’ve always had phases where I prefer one craft to another and spinning is all shiny and new to me so it’s not surprising that I’ve been favouring it.  But I kind of miss knitting and feel like I need to set aside some time for it.  Spinning is a little more physical than knitting, requiring me to either sit up straight or stand (I prefer to ply standing) whereas I can knit curled up in a ball with very little movement whatsoever.  In fact it’s not even strictly necessary for me to have my eyes open!  Yesterday’s weather was grey and miserable after a lovely sunny weekend so a night of the sofa with my knitting cheered me up no end.  Despite really wanting to work on my lovely, bright, cheerful hand dyed socks (blogged here), the first of which I have left so tantalisingly close to being finished, I did the right thing and spent all evening working on my wedding shrug.

 This is now around 20% finished with 58 days to go to the wedding so I think I will have to pencil in a few more evenings to work on it exclusively.  At least if I focus on worrying about getting my shrug done on time it might stop me panicking about the wedding itself.  How’s that for a diversionary tactic eh?

Self sabotage

Looking at my spinning projects, all so tempting and numerous, I know that really I should just concentrate on one and actually try to finish something.  Yet somehow I accidentally ended up on Etsy and once again fell in love with some Shunklies fibre.  Luckily I’m really unsure exactly how I want to spin them, so hopefully by the time I’ve come up with a plan I will have possibly completed another project.

These are 2 beautiful bright bright bright merino batts, with little mohair curls.  I can’t decide if I want to spin a yarn which gradually goes from blue to pink throughout the whole skein or if I’d like it to phase back and forth in gradual stripes.  I like the idea of both, but wonder whether the latter would suit my attention span a little better!

This is a blend of merino and silk and once again I just fell in love with the colours.  I’d like to make a 4-ply with this, but I’d also like it to stripe.  I think this may involve me splitting up the entire thing, grouping the colours and laying them out carefully in the right order.  This sounds like effort, so I can’t imagine I’ll be starting any time soon.  I’m enjoying the planning of it anyhow.

And finally, this is the reason I ended up on Etsy having my little fibrey accident.

I was having a little look for jewellery for the wedding and I hope you’ll agree that this is just perfect.  Those two little birdies look so happy and content sharing their little branch that I just couldn’t resist.  The shop is here bird fans.

Catch up

I’ve not had much time for blogging recently, which is a real shame, but with 80 days to go until the wedding there seems to always be something else which needs my attention.  For this reason I am really looking forward to Knitting and Crochet Blog Week at the end of the month, loads of  info here if anyone wants to join in.  This is particularly great for me at the moment, because having set topics to write about and knowing them in advance means that I can prepare for the posts in the shorts lulls in wedding preparation, rather than finding time to sit down and write a whole post in one go.  It does mean that I should really make sure that I am completely up to date with posts about my current projects, because it will be a week of writing about other things.  So with that in mind, this is the current state of all my spinning projects

Stripy black, white and grey merino, chugging along slowly

The sparkly bfl from FeltStudioUK, nearly 1/4 done and loving the sparkles

Merino tencel from FeltStudioUK, now on the second ply. this is sooo shiny

My knitting projects are all mostly hibernating, except for the wedding shrug which is growing slowly, I haven't taken a picture because it is still a white rectangle, just a bit longer than it was before.

And for the biggest project of all, the wedding, I have now purchased bridesmaids dresses and my shoes, my lovely lovely shoes!  The bridesmaids dresses are a rather surprising shade of blue – surprising in that I don’t really do blue and I was just so sure they would be pink.  Hey ho, best get off and rethink the flowers!

Small triumphs

Last weekend was crazy busy, I even took Friday off work and still felt like I had no time to sit still and just make stuff.  My wedding shrug still looks like a rectangle – albeit a slightly longer rectangle than before – and I still have many spindles half full of singles with no friends to be plied with.  There is one exception though,

 This is a teeny tiny skein made from that little bit of green fluff that came with my FeltStudioUk the other week.  I’m really pleased with it, even though it is only wee.  I didn’t bother to measure it and I haven’t checked to see what weight it is yet, but it looks like yarn and seems nicely balanced so I’m happy.  The more eagle eyed among you may notice that I’m posting about this finished yarn, yet I have made no mention of the sparkly pink stuff that was so very nearly finished a few posts back.  Well, I finished plying it, washed it and then it became very clear that my plying had been a little overenthusiastic.  A little trip back round the spindle to remove some of the plying twist is very much in order.  However when it is done I shall have just over a hundred metres of sparkly loveliness and I have most certainly learnt an invaluable lesson about plying twist.

Shrugging off the crazies

I'm still not really sure where my camera cable is so it's back to the crappy phone cam pictures.  Not ideal but I have actual knitting to share and no matter how beautifully I attempt to describe what is essentially a white fuzzy rectangle, I think a photograph is a much better medium.  So this is my wedding shrug in all it's white, fuzzy, rectangular glory.

So far I have done 4 repeats of the 21 needed for the main body of the shrug.  Each repeat is essentially 26 rows of stockinette with the odd short row thrown in for fun so this is fairly mindless - i.e soothing balm for a wedding addled brain.  For clarification the short rows are actually for shaping, not just fun!  They ensure that this piece forms a flat ring, like a running track, rather than just a loop, helping the garment sit nicely round the shoulders.  Now, I think I may have mentioned that I was knitting this in white with little silver sparklies, however when I tried to add the project to Ravelry I began to suspect that this was not the case.  I could find no such yarn in my virtual stash, there was white Kidsilk Haze and pale blue Kidsilk Night (with silver sparklies) but no white and sparkly.  So I went back to my actual stash and found that there was indeed some non sparkly white in there which when placed next to the sparkly stuff I was knitting with......

showed that I had indeed made a mistake.  The whiteness just makes the yarn I had been using look a bit grubby.  It's a very subtle difference, but I think I would have been so disappointed when I tried it on with my dress.  Thank heavens I had only knitted 30ish rows when I noticed.  So I've started again with the correct yarn, lets just hope I don't change my mind about my wedding dress and have to start again with a whole new colour!

In non wedding news, I have been spinning.  Having freed up a couple of spindles I started spinning both of the new braids I got the other day.  They both contain fibres I've not spun before and I'm enjoying the differences.  The merino tencel blend feels almost elasticy when I draft it, it's quite strange but I love the shine of the yarn I'm spinning.  The BFL is not so different to what I'm used to but I'm enjoying working with it, mainly because it's sparkly!

The ones at the front are the new ones.  I'm thinking I may need to find a bigger jar for my spindles!

Calm

Just a quick post, I've been meaning to post for a few days but I have lots of photos to take and I still haven't charged up my camera.

I've managed to calm myself down about the expectations for the wedding, the sense of rising panic is abating and I have decided that this is proportional to the amount I knit on my wedding shrug.  Because the wedding is in June I have chosen to knit this to wear as it's not too heavy and is a nice little detail.  I had a little false start with it, highlighting the dangers of stashing things for years and then relying on your memory to find the right yarn in said stash.  This is explained better with pictures so I'll save it for later.

As well as this knitting and a lot of spinning, I have also been dabbling in card making in order to make my wedding invitations.

 I'm pleased with them, they are very simple with a little bit of sparkle, but I'm very relieved to find that I'm not really enjoying making them that much.  Once they are done I can leave card making to the card makers, safe in the knowledge that I don't need to divide my crafting time any further to incorporate yet another craft - phew!

Stress

I'm not one for stress, I don't enjoy it and I don't thrive off it like some so I try not to do it.  Yesterday the world seemed to have other ideas and I'm stressed about being stressed about things I don't want to stress about.  Marvellous.  However, while all around me were demanding answers about wedding cakes and cars and flowers and all manner of other matrimonial fripperies I had new fibre to play with.  Thank heaven for sheep.....and Etsy!  Cue terrible phone pics - I really need to find the cable to charge my camera!

So pretty...this is a merino and tencel blend which is so soft and smooth I kind of want to sleep on it and the colours are just irresistible.

This is BFL with sparkles, I've only spun merino so far so I thought I'd give BFL a go and these colours are fantastic - even if they do remind me of a shell suit I have in the 80s.  These are both by Daniela of FeltStudioUk and I can heartily recommend her.  The braids came so quickly and she has so many colours to choose from, plus she slipped this in my package too:

I don't know what fibre this is and I would never choose greens to buy, but it is so lovely that I started to spin it immediately - despite needing to finish plying the sparkly pink merino.  Oh well, I guess the heart wants what it wants - and right now any distraction can only be a good thing.

You what!

Last night's wedding venue appointment has been postponed until Saturday, but the lady was very apologetic and let us know all the dates that were free.  So instead of going there or spending the evening knitting or spinning we high tailed it round to my parents and had a big old wedding pow wow  Between us we have decided that our favourite date was June 3rd, so providing the venue looks good I shall be getting married in just over 4 months - eek!

However, for today I cannot be thinking about all that at all.  We finally shipped the kittens off to the vet to be neutered today, we'd left it longer than we intended and being a boy and a girl we didn't want to risk any incidents.  A few days ago we spotted Billy clambering on Izzy's back and making a very inept job of humping her so the phone call to the vet was made with haste.  Stu took them in this morning and a short while later I get a text saying that Billy is a girl!  I am still in shock, Billie (as she henceforth shall be known) can't be a girl!  The vet said they understood how it happened, she is very big and is a total bruiser and you know...the humping.  So I've been out today and bought them some slightly less gender specific collars, all the while cursing the stooopid woman we got them from.

So for tonight I will hopefully be getting some actual knitting and spinning done while I help my kitty get in touch with her feminine side.

Bridezilla awakes

I had a post planned for today, all about the spinning I've been doing and the new knitting book I got as a replacement for a duplicate Christmas present.However, I'm feeling far too distracted for this so I'm just going to write a quick post about what's on my mind. 

Wedding. 

I could stop there, because that is basically what's going on in my brain.  When we got engaged in June we both knew that we wanted to get married as soon as possible but we are just now really starting to organise it.  Tonight we are off to see a lady about the reception and we may even have a date by the end of the day and all of a sudden I'm writing lists of things to organise, things to think about, trying to think of things I've not yet thought of but may need to think about thinking about...and so on.  I'm aware that I'm being a weeny bit crazy and hope this is not a sign of things to come.  With any luck I'll be feeling a bit more lucid and grounded tomorrow if things are a little more concrete.  Til then!