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!




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.




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



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.

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

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!?

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

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... ;)