Thursday, January 20, 2011

Project 365

So, I haven't been playing over here for a while...

I've been working on organising our wedding and fabulous things that are associated with that.

I've also been doing Project365. :)

So this probably won't get updated much. But follow my wordpress, hopefully that will stick some more... <3

Friday, May 21, 2010

More wedding things... photography and fabric swatches!

Not much has been happening on the planning front - we really, really need to work out a photographer soon, but I think we're somewhere between being overwhelmed with choice and freaking out about how much wedding photography costs. It's not like we haven't been looking... but we're going to set aside Sunday night to go and narrow it down a bit more and work out who we actually want to go and see. We went and saw Emotive Images a couple of weeks ago - Louise was lovely, but... I don't know, I think there was still something missing? I'm not sure. I'm hoping that a Friday wedding will play in our favour and whoever we want to go with isn't booked already... Oh well, if it's meant to be, it'll all fall into place. Like when we bought our house, don't get to emotionally attached until it's booked in.

Meanwhile, the exciting part of today is I got fabric swatches from Honeypie Boutique!


dresses

I went with Ivory, White, 49, 56, 72 and 86. I was lucky enough to have a friend in the UK, so I got the samples shipped to her (yay for free shipping within the UK!) and then she posted them to me for 95p. Instead of £10.49. :\ I'm assuming they send it via courier, but I really wish they could do a better shipping price for just samples. I'm not sure how they were sent to my friend, but she could fit them into an envelope easily.

I really like the sweetheart neckline because that is more flattering for my bust. And I like the lace up back.

Anyway, the fabric is nice - good for the price that they are offering. They don't feel cheap! I think I might go and see if I can find fabric of the same quality or something... so at least I know what I'm getting in to.


colours

I tried to get colours as correct as possible, but I am taking the photos in the evening in fake light..

ivorywhite

I'm thinking of going the ivory with either the red or the purple as the contrast. I was so taken with green online, but it's a bleh, sagey colour. I wanted a great lime colour! Hrm, maybe I'd go red or purple with an ivory or white sash... The chocolate is a bit schmeh as well.

My dress in my head is a contrasting crinoline and matching shoes and sash.... I think it will be easier to find shoes to match purple or red than the pretty green I have it my head... and then Chrissy and Megan would wear the colour I'm not...

A call out - I would love to know anyone else who has used Honeypie Boutique! After exchange rates, shipping, crinoline and of course, dress work out to be about AU$350? which is awesome, seeing I don't want to spend heaps of money on my dress.

Monday, March 22, 2010

We have a date! And a venue! :O

I have just gotten back from putting the deposit on our venue, Topiaries at Beaumont!

It's such a beautiful place - we saw it when we moved house (which was four months before we got engaged), and it looked gorgeous - we didn't even know what it was called! I don't remember who suggested looking into getting married there, but we were so sure that it would be out of our price range (and we didn't even have a price range :) We did the slow-drive-by one day to find out what it was called and kept it in the back of our minds.

The first wedding magazine I got was one I borrowed from the library, and it had a little write up in there about the place. The next one I bought actually had a feature on the place under their "Perfect Day" section, and I giggled that the couple that were married there found it the same way we did - driving past it a few times (coming home from work, opposed to moving house, but then again, Tam had seen it driving around for work as well...

They had an Open Day on the 28th of February - which of course, I was working. I sent Tam on a reconnaissance mission, and he had a good time, getting the feel of the venue. Took a couple of shots of the place, grabbed as many leaflets for the photographers, cake designers, djs, dresses, suits, celebrants as he could, and talked for a little bit about the day. Peter said he would call Tam during the week to organise a time to talk more if he liked.

Piccies from the Open Day:


Ceremony area, with picnic benches for seating

Pool, which is outside the guesthouse (six rooms available)

The venue overlooks Samford Valley

Inside one of the guest rooms

The Beaumont Room, which is where we'll have our reception. The tables were done up in a few different styles.

So we organised a meeting on Sunday the 7th of March, after breakfast


Pancakes with berries and maple syrup

French Toast with Bacon (mmmbacon)

and it was so pretty!






I knew, walking back to the car that it was the place.

We did, however, want to be fully well rounded, so we wanted to look at a few other places. We checked out Tom Petrie's Restaurant and Function Centre at Old Petrie Town. It was nice... but (of course, there was a but!) it just didn't have the same vibe as Topiaries. Even between the people... the gentleman we spoke to was very nice, but ... you know when you know, you know? ;)

Old Petrie Town - Fig trees

The back of their chapel

Then again, Old Petrie Town did have a pig. Random, I know - the gentleman was showing us around the property and showing us the beautiful fig trees, where we found a pig having the time of its life, digging up around the bottom of the tree. Wasn't wild, just having a good time.

Pig.

But it was odd. OPT was asking us why we wanted a lunch time wedding, why we wanted a Friday... I felt very put off on justifying our decision. Whereas Topiaries went "Friday lunchtime? Awesome!". I dislike having to justify my decisions, having done that last week when trying on dresses (more on that another time...). And they didn't make any concessions that we were having this on a Friday lunchtime - they were charging us Saturday night rates, which I thought was a bit crap, honestly.

And then we went to a wedding at Boulevard Gardens at Indooroopilly on the weekend! Again, gorgeous area, very nice - they certainly knew what they were doing - but I didn't like that there was another wedding going on at the same time. It loses something when have other people there that aren't part of your wedding, I think.

So, we were sold on Topiaries. So I went there this afternoon and paid our deposit. We are getting married 8th April, 2011. :O Which is starting to get not that far away (I know, terrible grammar). We don't have to do anything venue wise now until about two months out.

The other reason I love this place is that we can get ready there, spend our wedding night there ... and in my imagination, I can see us going out for dinner that night, in our dolled up gear, and spending that first night just on us - which is why I like the idea of a lunchtime thing even more. And that means savings on hire cars (or putting our friends out by using their cars) and the night's accommodation is included in the $500 booking fee (which is pretty awesome).

That's us! :D

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Buzzing away...

She's done! She's finished!

 
  
  
 

Honeybee Cardigan by Cosmicpluto (Ravelry link)
Materials: Malabrigo Sock in Archangel, 3.75mm circulars - one long one for the body and 30cm circulars for the arms.
Used: 261g 
Size: 42.5"
Mods: No mods, really. A fantastic pattern, and my first bottom up construction cardigan, so I didn't really want to mess with it ;)
Started: 17 October, 2009
Finished: 2 February, 2010 (there was a lot of other knitting in between that!)
Made For: myself!

What a fabulous knit. I really enjoyed this. 

The pattern was easily memorised (I had been stopped by a few people on the train asking about the garment, and they were amazed that I was doing it from memory :). I had the pattern memorised after two repeats in the swatch - it was so intuitive. The first four rows of the lace pattern were the easiest - rows five and six? a little bit more painful. They took almost as long as the first four. 

When I was doing the cap shaping, I put markers where the stitches I needed to decrease were (as in, decrease until there are x stitches remaining, I put two markers where x were, so I didn’t need to keep track of them - I always forget to mark my on my patterns where I'm up to - visual markers are better!)
I did have a little messy hurdle to overcome - my three skeins were all slightly different. To the point where you could see a difference from the outside of the wound ball to the inside of the wound ball. So instead of just rotating the three, I divided them into six balls and rotated the six of them. That was interesting. And then the colours looked different depending on the light. Not just photographing them and them looking different - this photo was taken in the bathroom...

And this one was taken in the computer room: 

I'm still not sure what I will do for colour - I much prefer (and am much more suited!) to the darker, purple toned version! We'll see how it goes. I may still overdye it with a little bit of purple or something. Although I'll be sad to lose the yellow! 

I have just under 30g left of yarn. I was beginning to worry that I’d run out (which would leave me in quite a pickle, seeing we don’t have any of this yarn left at the shop - and Archangel has varied so much between dyelots!) but I have plenty to spare.

I enjoyed using the 30cm circulars for knitting the sleeves - it worked much better than magic looping or double pointed needles due to the difference between the thin yarn and larger than usual needles. I did find when I made my Featherweight, I had ladders on the sleeves due to magic looping laceweight on 4.00mm needles. I've learnt my lesson, and now I am building up a small stock of 30cm Addi circulars. 

Blocking - wow, it grew immensely. It measured just on 12” from bottom of garment to under the arm before I blocked it, and now it measures 16”. Same with the arms - they were just below my elbow before blocking, afterwards they are just hitting my wrists. So I’m glad I didn’t knit any further! And before you ask, yes I did wash and block my swatch. The weight of the garment kinda drags it down in a way ;) 

The buttons are picked from Grans’s button stash. There are a lot of buttons in there that I love, but there were only one or two of them. So I was impressed that I found six of them that suited the garment. They were measured 2” apart… but when I blocked it, they measure more like 3” apart. I don’t think I’ll wear it fully buttoned though.

This is going to be amazingly warm at the shop! I think I see more garments done in Malabrigo sock in my future! (and really, it’s not that expensive. I needed 3 skeins, and that was plenty. And it blocks amazingly, so I didn’t need to knit much ;) (I would have been happy where I’d knitted to, but I’m even happier that the garment is longer!)

She got to have a little glamour shoot at the shop today, so I'll include the beautiful photos taken by Kelly

So, the question is... what next!?

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Rippling down the river...

So, I've started my first proper, in depth crochet project - Lucy's Ripple Blanket



I'm using Cascade 220 with a 5.00mm hook. It's  so lovely to do when watching tv. It did take a while to do the very first row, as I went into the back of the chain instead of going under the top two chains - therefore the two chains are at the bottom of the blanket, which will match the top of the blanket when I finish. Anyhoo... it makes for a very fiddly first row - as in, it took almost all of the movie UP! to do.



I didn't really think through how big it was going to be - I thought "yeah, 15 repeats sounds good... which is chaining 210 + 3 to turn." Meanwhile, 15 repeats is 135cm. Which means I'm going to have to purchase another 9 skeins to get somewhat of a rectangle - each colour stripe is around 2.5cm tall, meaning each repeat of colours is 22.5cm long... each colour takes 25g (or just under) which means I'll get 4 repeats out of one skein... 4 x 22.5cm is 90cm which isn't long enough for something that is 135 wide. So I'll double it, to use up as much as possible, making it 180cm long




Each colour is made up of two rows - one row takes about 30-40 minutes to complete. Great for watching Chuck... Dollhouse (omg, until certain things happen and you have to stop crocheting because it's O_O worthy...), Gilmore Girls... I started this on Saturday night, and was weaving the ends for finishing the first repeat of colours this morning (I am NOT leaving it until the end to weave all the ends in. That's just crazy)



It looks quite homey in this basket, which used to belong to Grans. It would have... it is? her birthday on Friday. She'd be 75. *sigh* The family is going out for lunch, to somewhere Pop hasn't been before, which will be good. We bought him a digital camera for Christmas, which will go great with the computer Mum & Dad got for him for his birthday. He loves to email us, and it does put a smile on my dial.

Miss you, Grans. <3

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Finished for another year...

I ended up with 30 finished projects for 2009 - lots of hats and a few gloves, a few swap projects, three adult garments! A few things frogged, a few things sitting still on the needles... but a very exciting year! 




Hoping to break that this year, or at least come out with some more quality pieces! :)

Rusted Root - take 2!

Kelly has been running Knit-A-Longs over at the tangled YARNS blog and the Ravelry group for October and November. This time, it's a summer Knit-A-Long, seeing the time of year is a wee bit hectic to fit a project into one month. A bit of a twist, it's a choice two projects from Zephyr Style!

I had said that I'd like to do another Rusted Root for my sister back when I finished mine.  This took a little bit longer... I don't know why, I just didn't have the same "omgosh, need to finish it!"like I did with mine. It still could have been a few more pattern repeats longer, although I don't think there would be that problem if she wore a singlet underneath it.

Anyhoo, finished just after Christmas - she wore it to the Outback Spectacular on Wednesday night (I was casting off as we were driving down to the Gold Coast...)



as well as to our engagement part on Saturday night.



Rusted Root by Zephyr Style (Ravelry link)
Materials: Cotton Fleece in Dusty Eggplant, 4.00mm Addi circulars for body, 3.50mm for ribbing
Used: 2.1 skeins - I had to break into the third skein for the last two rows of ribbing and the bind off.
Size: XS
Mods:
I did twisted rib for all the ribbing. I forgot to go down a needle size for the bottom ribbing... but I think I forgot to do that for mine as well ;) No other mods. Ended up with 12 pattern repeats.

Started: 26th November, 2009
Finished: 30th December, 2009
Made For: Caitlin


Hello there, my friend



Finally, after many months of waiting, I have a sewing machine! No more borrowing off others. No more "oooh if only I had that sewing machine, I could make this!". And most importantly, I have other things to start stashing! muwahhah! ;)

My aunt upgraded her sewing machine, so this one was hers... it's been around a while ;) At least 10, if now 12 years? It's a Janome MyExcel 18W. White. I don't know if it has an instruction manual. Hrm. Should check in box.

Went into Spotlight and picked up two patterns: this cute little puffed sleeved top by McCalls, and this sleeveless number by Butterick. It was interesting picking out patterns, and trying to imagine it in different fabrics. Decided to make the Butterick pattern first, and went and found some fabric. Came home, washed... and then it sat there until the last night Mum was here.

I think I subscribe to the "fly by the seat of my pants" type of sewing. I started doing everything okay, asking Mum questions. But when you measure yourself to see what size you should be making... and then realise you need to make cut out one size in the front, and another size in the back - something your instructor hasn't done before... then it becomes interesting.

We ended up firstly cutting out the 24 in the front, and the 18 in the back... because you can always take it in! I'm 19.5 inches across my back but at the fullest part of my bust, I'm 25 inches, which made the arm holes a bit weird - I still don't think they're right. And I bought the 16-24 pattern, so I had to take the back in to what I think worked out was the 12?

But anyway, I ended up with a wearable garment, which is the important thing! I still need to perfect the attaching of the straps to each other a bit more.



Halfway through sewing this garment, I realised I needed a pin cushion (I also realised I need more pins... the 100 pack I bought really didn't go far enough. Or maybe it was only a 50 pack?). I had a pin cushion pattern saved from almost twelve months ago - On Pins and Needles by Heather Bailey. I didn't actually print this out and follow it... again, flying by the seat of my pants sewing (FBTSOMPS).



I used some fabric I bought ages ago (I have an obsession with buying fat quarters... ), the left over green from my top, some ribbon that I got in the Green Swap from jaffajane88 on the Australian Swappers Ravelry group. The button is very special; it came from my grandmother's button stash. It's such a perfect button, about an inch wide, and so smooth. I couldn't imagine it on a garment, and I think this pin cushion will be sticking around a bit longer than any garment would :)

So, I have another top to sew, and then the Amy Butler Tunic! But first, I need more fabric. And I think this means a trip to Ikea... ;)

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Happy holidays!




Our first Christmas in our own home (and our first Christmas as an engaged couple!!)... how exciting is that!?




This is our little piece of the world... a perfect size for us now and I think it will continue to be fantastic as the years go by.

Mum, Dad and Caitlin have come down to spend our first Christmas in our home with us; they drove down and got here on Thursday with a trailer load of thing that never moved out with me when I left home. Boxes of books, toys, the step ladder I made in grade 10... a few extra things too (a beautiful chair made by a family friend for Tam and I - the Jack and Jill chair he calls it... it's still in pieces to assemble though... a warming tray for our upcoming engagement party... a little freezer for some extra storage...). It's so nice to have them here at the moment (extra awesome because I get to play with their Canon 50D. Waaaaant. [would like some extra lenses too please...]), even though we only saw them a few days ago. They are staying in our room, and Tam and I have relocated to the guest room.

Christmas was a great day - not hurrying through presents to get somewhere else... not hurrying through presents because people were coming over... a yummy breakfast of bacon, eggs and pancakes... ham sandwiches for lunch... lamb roast for dinner!







A lovely day, received a few knitting related things, and a little portable green house (hopefully this will help me not kill my herbs :( ). I might do a round up post of recently acquired knitting things sometime soon.

But we're going to enjoy the rest of today - heading out to visit Caitlin's old school principal, who now lives out at Wellington Point. Dinner there, and then the rest of the week will be planning for our second engagement party! There is too many people to have just the one, so we thought we'd split it up into two - friends and family.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

It already feels strange if it is not here...

We've had a bit of exciting news since my last post.

On the 14th November, 2009, my darling boyfriend became my darling fiance. *1, 2, 3... awww*

This is us just after the proposal:



Pretty awesome, huh? There's a cute little story about how it happened to.

A lazy afternoon a few months back, I asked Tam to tell me something. Something I didn't know about this impending engagement that was "eventually" going to happen. He was almost asleep, and he said "It'll happen before the end of the year". I'd heard this before, so I confirmed, "before the end of this year? Before the end of 2009?" A lazy smile, and he said, "yes, it will happen before the end of this year".

We had a family reunion coming up in December, so I thought, "Well, of course it will happen before that. But when? How?!" The jewellery shop was in the city, and seeing we live about half an hour outside the CBD now, it was becoming a bit difficult for him to get in there on the sly.

Saturday morning came along - we'd been invited to a BBQ at Melissa's place, but Tam wanted to go into the city to pick up his comics. I said, "oh, can I come into the city with you?". "No." he said very bluntly. I raised my eyebrows, and went "okay then. Fine. We'll go to the BBQ first and then I'll drop you off at the train station". But by the time we got to the BBQ, Tam wouldn't have had time to get to the city via the train - the comic book store closed at 4pm, and it takes about an hour to get to the city via the train. He gave in, and I said, "Don't worry, I won't follow you around. You can do whatever you need, I'll just sit and knit in the food court!". As we left Melissa's, I gave her a very strange look as Tam said something about buying comics, which tried to convey "I think he's going to pick up the engagement ring today!!!!!!". Unfortunately the message didn't get across ;)

We made it into the city about 2:30pm, craving some lunch. The closest Commonwealth ATM I knew of was at Broadway on the Mall, which also housed Gillett's Jewellers. Tam mentioned needing to buy a external hard drive for his aunt at Harvey Norman's, which is just about the jeweller's. He asked, "do you want to come with me upstairs?". I said, "No, it's okay. I'll go and have lunch." Tam stared at me with a funny look on his face, saying "are you sure?" "No, you can go by yourself".

20 minutes later, I had almost finished lunch, when Tam comes back from Harvey Norman's, an external hard drive in tow. I felt... a little sad, and I assumed he had paid some money off the ring, or he really didn't need to go in there, he was just buying a hard drive. We had lunch, went to Comics Etc, and headed back to the car, which was parked down near the Belgium Beer Garden.

While strolling back to the car, hand in hand, I looked down at one stage and saw something in his cargo pocket. Puzzled, I snuck another look a few minutes later - that looks like a box! A box that it little enough to put a ring in! Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh... that sneaky boy! I began to giggle. "What's wrong?" he asked. "What are you giggling about?" "Nooooooooothing!!!" I replied. This continued for about two blocks... giggling... trying to get closer to his pocket. He finally worked out what I was trying to do, and he swapped sides, putting me as far away from the pocket as possible. "What!!" I cried. "So I'm allowed to be over here, touching this pocket" - I pat the empty one - "but not the pocket over here?" - I tried to pat the other pocket, but he ran away, laughing as well.

We got back to the car, and he unlocked it, put the bag from Harvey Norman's in the back seat, closed the door and said, "Do you want to go for a walk?" More very inappropriate giggling: "maybe!!" We toddled down to the Botanical Gardens, where we walked around for a little bit, until we found an empty park bench. Then we sat down, and watched the house boats for a little while, giggling at the people rowing from their house boat to the shore.

We sat there for a little while, until Tam said, "I'm not very good at speeches". I smiled, and replied, "It's okay, I still love you". I don't remember what else was said now. I'm a bit sad about it. But there was smiling... and feeling safe...

He fumbled in his pocket, and took out a little purple box. And then there was a box within a box. Heh. And then he got down on one knee, and asked, "will you?"

"Will I what?" I asked with a grin.

"Will you be my wife?"

"I'll have to think about it ;)"

"Oh."

"Of course I will be your wife!"



This ring has actually been picked out for over three years now. The details written down on a card, chilling out in his wallet for that long. Actually, I think we've had them written down two or three times. Every time we'd go into Gilletts, we'd look through the rings... none of them looked as nice as this one.





After, Tam called my dad, asking permission. Originally, he said no. And then he said I suppose so. And then asked something about our new house. That seemed to be a common theme in telling our male relatives about our upcoming nuptials.

Our families are very excited about this - as of we, of course! We had a little engagement party on the weekend for my family in Mackay - just a few friends were invited as well.

We are thinking of an April 2011 wedding. We don't have a theme or a plan or anything as of yet, but hopefully after our other engagement party in January, we will start jotting down some ideas.

So very exciting! :DDD