Author: Susan

Invitations

Our wedding invitations finally arrived, and I’m smitten with them. My parents humoured my whims, and so Kevin and I chose dramatic three-layer invitations (a dark purple backing, a shimmery lavendar middle layer,and a cream top layer), with a ribbon, double envelopes, and shimmery lavendar envelope linings. They’re everything I was hoping for.

Aside from the ribbons, and heavy paper, and the colors, one of my favourite parts in the reply card — we centered the accepts/regrets on a single, symmetrical line. It’s been making me happy for every envelope I’ve addressed.

Assembling the envelopes was daunting, especially since my etiquette books devote about 30 pages to correctness in this area. Woah. Instructions read along the lines of “The reply envelope is placed face down on the reception card. The reply card is slipped face up beneath the flap of the reply envelope.” Challenging to my brain’s visualization. Or, further, “The invitation and its enclosures are placed into the inside envelope with the base of the invitation at the bottom of the envelope and the engraving facing the back of the envelope. The invitation is then placed into the inside envelope with the fold toward the bottom of the envelope. Once stuffed, the inside envelopes are inserted into the outside envelopes. The front of the inside envelope faces the back of the outside envelope.” My poor, feeble, verbally-challenged brain parses these as “the inside goes on the outside, facing forward, face down, and then turned”. Obviously, these aren’t quite marching orders.

So, you can imagine my deep relief when I found all of this in picture form. I just have to follow the directions for diagram three, and then we’re all good to go. A huge relief. Thank you, internet.

Assembling and addressing all of them has made for a series of deeply enjoyable evenings. The invitations are so beautiful, and the paper is rich, I bought a great pen, and so the whole thing is a pleasure. Even better, each time I get to a new name on the list, I keep thinking that I should enclose a little extra note, just so that they know how much I hope they can come. A “You *really* matter to me — I hope you can make it.” It’s just neat to realize how many people, and who, matter viscerally in my life, and our lives. Especially where so many of these people are on the east coast, and we’re stuck out on the west coast, it’s deeply satisfying to write their names on the page and hope that they’ll be able to make it.

And then, the next morning, I have a batch to mail…

Did I mention how gorgeous the paper is? 🙂

A new look

Too many nights in a row of wedding things, and last night I revolted and took up a totally unrelated project. 🙂

After Kevin graduated, I was hanging out at his fraternity helping him get packed up. One of his fraternity brothers was packing his car and left an Ikea chair till last. It wouldn’t fit, and I offered to buy it. At $25, it felt like quite the steal, and was the first piece of furniture for my first apartment. (Thanks, Metzger!!) After four years of college abuse, and four years since of sitting in the sunshine at my place, it’s been looking a bit worse for wear.

In case you can’t see in that photo, the formerly black cover is now a mottled mix of pink, grey, and charcoal. The stripes at the creases are substantially darker than the surrounding fabric.

It also looked chronically out of place next to our other furniture, especially the blue futon.

So a trip to Joann fabrics, where I found a $9 corduroy remnant, *just* big enough, that matched perfectly (what ARE the odds?!**), and a few hours later, I had a brand new chair!!

It looks so sophisticated and wonderful compared to the old one! 🙂 I reused all of the padding from the original, so I didn’t have to go through the nonsense of cutting foam — a major plus. Best of all, it not only coordinates with the futon, it really matches!!

The wood somehow even looks like it was meant to go! Pretty crazy cool.

I didn’t use a pattern, just sort of lay the fabric down, matched things up, cut a bit and went to town with the sewing machine. I chose to have overlapping fabric in the back rather than dealing with zippers. I had to rip three seams (out of probably 25 or thirty), but that’s better than my usual average. 🙂 The size is great, and I figured out how to square off all of the corners by refolding the fabric and seaming, which I feel particularly clever about.

Yay!

**Unfortunately, I tried to turn one lucky find into a streak. The quest for bridal shoes was a bust, and I didn’t even like anything in Crate & Barrel. Should have stopped while I was ahead.

A sunset photo

Gorgeous loveliness at the end of the street, courtesy of Kevin and his digital camera…

Oooh! I love all of the clouds on the horizon, pretending to be mountains. It kept looking like the Olympics were poking through, and then you’d look again only to realize the clouds had shifted into new positions.

The New Sometimes Commute

I love this picture. Seattle’s winter weather starts to grate, sometimes. The clouds are so deep, the light is so grey — it’s just a leaden landscape. The mountains are hidden, and it’s dark too early to see the huge pine trees on the side of the road on the way home. But then they moved daylight savings time up this year, and I’ve been able to see the summer coming a few wonderful weeks early — we have warm weather and light evenings, so I’ve started ditching the car and walking home from work. The way home is easy and lovely — four miles, nearly all downhill. Reversing in the morning is a little tougher. 🙂

It figures, though that the day I bring the camera, the typical thick winter gray would return. Here’s the view from the 405 pedestrian overpass at eight in the morning. It’s a straight uphill walk from the lake, and then you climb up a two- or three-storey ramp to get to this point, so it’s just way, way above everything. The clouds are practically at eye-level. You can just barely see the Olympic mountains peeking through at the horizon to the right of the pine trees. Gorgeous. The favour of a glimpse of the mountains is worth the gray to me.

From way up high on the ramp, I also got to see the upper limbs of the massive tree alongside it. The branches were budding, but the impressive sight was that they are covered with a thick moss. When you consider that this tree is totally open to the sky in four directions, it really throws into relief what a dark, wet climate this is during the winter months.

The walk is interesting. Rather than 520 or the back way that’s recently been slow due to construction, the “road” looked like this.

The public trail cuts in between backyard fences, and for a long portion, it cuts past all of the horse pastures in Bridle Trails. The path is a bit muddy, and so the hoof prints are very easy to pick out. I haven’t come across any riders yet, just the tracks.

A pretty pink project

Ages ago in Boston, I bought three colors of cotton classic. At the time I was thinking a scarf, but with only 324 yards, and my preference for wide scarves, it just didn’t seem like enough. By the time I’d done the math, I could no longer find the colors, and so they’ve been sitting, wound and waiting for new ideas.

After seeing some lovely entrelac, I decided to give fingerless gloves a shot. I’ve been playing all weekend. My first try was torn out because I hadn’t understood the need for even numbers of stitches in the squares. (If the squares are odd, you’d have to cut the yarn at the end of each square instead of at the end of each row. Got it.) My second try was way too large. And my third try, while lovely, will be ripped after pictures because these would be gloves for monster hands. They’re about 9″ in diameter, and they need to be 7″. While I’m starting over anyway, I’m mulling over casting on in the round. I would still have to have knit and purl sides, I think, but it would eliminate the side triangles and the seam.

Here’s take three, nestled in amidst the blooming periwinkle. 🙂

And while I love that picture, the colors weren’t accurate, so here’s a sunny closeup. The medium pink is a dusty rose (not lavendar), and the light color is a pearly pink.

The yarn clashes

I’d been all excited about using the extra ball of Rowan Cotton Glace from the baby sweater to make a pair of Fetching gloves. I showed up at knitting on Wednesday with the pattern, the yarn, and the needles (a minor victory in organization). But, I was promptly foiled when I tried to find the end of the yarn to cast on. Someone had snipped off about ten sections, each between a few inches and a few feet long, and then painstakingly re-wrapped the snipped bits and tucked the ends back into the middle. So aggravating.

So, since the pattern appears to call for just about every inch (and since I felt sort of ripped off), I went back to the yarn store to exchange the ball for new yarn. I was expecting a battle despite the receipt, but they were great about the exchange — sweet!

So here’s the new ball, basking in the sun (yay!!), next to my frilly tulips.

Success?

All of a sudden, on Saint Patricks day, I realized that I’d hit the decreases for my second sock. Crazy! Here’s (finally!) a good shot of the color, with one row to go.

And a shot of the picot edge, lace ribbing, and the interlocking double diamond lace:

So, I finished, sewed in the ends, and dunked them. Since I don’t have sock blockers, here they are blocking on a towel:

I’m convinced that I should have used size 0 needles instead of 2s. I’d gone down a size from the recommended 3s, but it really wasn’t enough. Not only is the fabric loose, but they are quite large. They look like they would fit well over my slippers, instead of under them. I’ll have to assess once they’re dry. Is it possible to shrink things knit with sock yarn?