OMG! So Flipping Cool!

After hand addressing 130 some save the date envelopes I'm pretty sure of three things: 1) I really need to lighten my grip on the pen; 2) I have carpal tunnel; and 3) I'm definitely printing the envelopes for the formal invitations. While theknot.com says that it is absolutely unacceptable to let your computer do the work, Martha Stewart says that it's okay. I'll trust Martha on this one, given she's the queen of all things DIY AND Etiquette. I'm sure she didn't write the article, but I digress.....

The save the date cards had a bit of a snafu; according to them I'm getting married. 7/14/201. Get your time machines out peeps. I'm pretty sure that I just missed the full date not fitting in the allotted spot when I created them on Walmart's photo page (yes I'm cheap). I really didn't want to wait the 2 weeks it would take to return them and have them reprinted, so I sucked it up, found an old scratch board pen and scratched the two in the photo paper. Wouldn't you know that after 150 I could scratch out a fairly convincing two? This is the second F-up I've made; the first being that I ordered text paper, not card stock to make the pocket folds out of. I decided that would be okay since it just reduces the weight of the invite and hopefully the postage as well.

Back to the invites I think I got the wording down, the directions return cards and so on together. All I needed was a nice map. Now I could spend 4 hours on photoshop trying to make one, I could pay someone on Etsy a ridiculous amount to make me one...or I could do a little internet searching. Since I'm both lazy and cheap, I chose the latter and found this little bit of awesomeness....

Which gave me an awesome map, that I will choose not to share less my three anonymous readers decide to crash my wedding (email me, and get a formal invite at least!) Hopefully the link took you to the right place, but here is a mock one that I created so you can see how cool this is.




In the meantime I wait for postage to arrive so I can send out save the dates and the rest of the fun stuff for the invites so I can finally get a full mock up to weigh, send to myself and of course take pics of it for here.

What mistakes did you make when planning for the wedding? What cool tools did you find to help you along?

Fiberwhore is getting Hitched!

Second time is the charm right? Oh it's third? Well we are going with second....

So for the next six or so months wedding me will be taking over the blog! Mostly so I can bitch and moan about how ridiculous weddings are of course. And of course it will be a mostly DIY wedding so hopefully I can add something useful to this as well.

I've already gotten a jump start on the planning. The first thing to get reserved was the photographer of course. I am choosing Volkel Image. He did a friends wedding and the pictures were fantastic! Pricey but so is the wedding and what use is all that money spent if you don't have great pictures to help remember it by?

I'm getting a head start on invites, decorations, lighting and rentals. What I'm not so excited about doing is finding a DJ, baker, caterer, florist and officiant.

So far one of the greatest challenges has been addresses. Getting them how to write them, FRUSTRATING!!!!!!! So I stole the bright idea from a friend who had done the same, to put an event invite up on Facebook to get friends and families to send us addresses since I have none of them...

If you are thinking about doing this DON'T. Worse idea ever. While about 20 of the people who I added to the "Event" bothered reading the event title and description and actually sent me their addresses, the rest either didn't respond at all or thought that it was the actual invitation to the wedding! GRRRRR!

The problem is that sometimes you want to send an invite to people even though you know there isn't a snow balls chance in hell that they will make it. It's more than irritating having someone write on your event wall, "JACK AND JULIE SMITH WILL NOT BE ATTENDING!!!!!" Names were changed but yes, that happened. In all caps. Thanks for being subtle Julie.

So I've deleted those who already given me their address and those who decided they will not attend. I'll send out one more message and then the whole disaster will be going away.

Thankfully my very lovely sister- and mother-in-law to be got together the huge list of addresses from his family. It was 50 some people, and I'm very sorry but second cousins aren't getting the automatic invite. There are a few that he is close enough to that they bothered to give me their address so they will get an invite.

In the end I decided to go through the list of originally invited, have Mr. Get Lucky do the same and sent them individual messages asking for their address which worked much better.

Now I have a list of 125 households and such that need to be sent invites. I know that about half of those won't attend. After all this is a second marriage for the both of us, his family lives 1000 miles away and they all attended the first one. I'm sure that most of my side should attend since my first wedding was more of like a backyard picnic and dinner for our immediate family (all 10 of us including the officiant). So I designed the invites and realized that the postage cost more than the invites! I have to fight the urge to cheap and not put a RSVP card in with the invites going to people I know won't come. Or to put the RSVP card in but not stamp it..... Also it is a good thing that I have til May to get these things put together as well.

So there is now way I'm paying someone to do Calligraphy on 125 envelopes, inner envelopes, return card envelopes, etc. Not when there are enough pretty fonts out there that I can run them through my printer and have a nice result. But now I'm trying to figure out exactly what the proper way is to write so and so's name. Should I address it to Mr. and Mrs. Jack Smith? Mr. Jack and Mrs. Jane Smith? Mr. and Mrs. Jack and Jane Smith? I'm supposed to include children's names on the inner envelope but even Mr. Get Lucky doesn't know all their names. Do I spell out Northeast or abreaviate NE, do I right out Sixtyfifth Street? It gets a little long when I have to write 122345 Sixty fifth Avenue Northeast Number 23456. Why is there no consensus on the right way to do it?

So what is your biggest invitation pet peeve?

New fun easy and quick hat

Kind of improvised the first version of this hat. You know cast on a number of stitches that I think will fit my head using some left over sock yarn that I hand spun doubled up. I figured out the math later. The fist version was ok, but I wrote up the pattern quick and figured I would share.

Materials
Size 3 circular needles or double points
Couple hundred? Yards of sport weight or light worsted yarn
Gauge...not real sure.

Cast on 80 stitches using a stretchy cast on. I like long tail. Join making sure not to twist. Insert marker at the beginning of the row. P one round. Start knit one below pattern:
Row1: k1, k1b to end
Row 2: p1b, p1 to end

Here is a link to a pattern...not exactly the same but hopefully it gets you the idea. Instead of using two colors you use one and because it is knit in the round you can't knit both rows, but instead have to purl as stated above.

Continue for 7" ending on a row 2. Begin decrease rows as follows:
Row 1: k1, k1b, k1, S2KP, k1, k1b (10 times)
Row 2: p1b, p1 to end
Row 3: k1, ssk, k1b, k2tog (10 times)
Row 4: p1b, p1, sl1, p1 (10 times)
Row 5: k1, S2KP (10 times)
Row 6: p1b, p1 to end
Row 7: k1, S2KP (5 times)
Break yarn and thread through remaining stitches pull tight.

Stitch abbreviations:
K1b - knit one below
P1b- purl 1 below
Ssk- insert needle as if to k1b, but slip the stitches instead, knit one, transfer slipped stitches over like a regular ssk.
S2KP—slip two tog, knit one, pass two slip stitches over

Wow it's been so long....

Oh how life has changed since my last post!! I was messing around on Ravelry (no they didn't let me back on, but Alters are wonderful things :).... Let me be perfectly clear, the only reason why I was on was to find some pattern ideas. I think it's time I picked up the needles again and more often. Of course I got a little curious to see if any one was knitting my patterns that I published on there and holy hell they are. There are even forum links! Well hot damn! I feel bad, it looks as if it had been abandoned :(.

As I reflect on the whole Ravelry drama, the ban wagon and what not, the only thing I miss about Ravelry is my presence as a designer. I don't miss the forum all that much. But what I did do was build my presence in the knitting community and I do miss that very much.

Well I haven't done a whole lot lately. I made a coat for a now ex friend's baby boy....



I made one glove.....


Been doing a little leather work....




a few socks at Christmas and a little of this and that, but not much.

Bye Bye Bloggy

Well I thought I might be able to find a few minutes each week to post, but it turns out that Grad school, kids and life take up all my time. So until I can find the time to post regularly, the blog is getting cut. I'm leaving up all my old posts and if anyone would like a PDF copy, drop me a line and I will email it out! The Etsy shop will continue to be updated although very slowly. I keep hearing rumors that it gets easier after the first year and hopefully I will be able to be a part time fiber addict again!

You're trying to sell that on Etsy...Really

Alright, in an attempt to get myself back into blogging amongst the chaos that is a PhD program, I'm starting a new weekly section titled "You're trying to sell that on Etsy...Really" featuring the most ridiculous handmade items I come across on my browsing through Etsy.

To start off this week, I have one that I found a while back on a treasury. Some chick decided to make art yarn out of her wedding dress. Okay, seems a little dumb to me, but what do I know. What really shocked was the price tag, a very specific $543.21.

If you would like to keep warm this winter you can surely do so under a big glob of yarn badly knit together...

What else gets you ready for fall? Ugly ass shorts!! If they don't look good on the anorexic model, probably won't look good on anyone else either.

I actually kind of like the hat. But if you are going to sell something, find a better model than yourself. This lady looks like she is going to melt if you throw some water on her. If you are going to model your own wares, make an attempt to gussy up a little and smile!

That's it for this week, time is limiting. Of course I promise I won't be snarky all the time, check back for the best of Etsy too!

It's been a busy summer

Well it has been! I have been doing just a little knitting on a pair of socks using the handspun merino Twisted Roving in Warlock. I am doing two at a time from the toe up so that I can use all the yarn and I have come to two conclusions, 1) I have a lot of yardage and 2) I am very proud that I have not knit my socks together yet!

Speaking of Twisted, I got an invite for custom order yesterday! I already have close to $200 in my cart, but I'm going to have to cut that back somehow. Dang you Meg for making such lovely colorways!! I did a little dyeing myself today. One sock yarn and one Landscapes colorway, I will post pics when they are dry and skeined tomorrow. I still have yet to get to the yummy base yarn that I got a while back, with the thesis and kids and husband and all, it's been hard to find the time. Not to mention, J is a slave driver!! We have been working our butts off around the ranch, unfortunately, my butt is still just as big. GRR.

I added a new item to the shop! The rose boxes that I send the stitch markers in were really popular, so I am offering them as a stand alone item. These are a little bigger (4" in diameter/2" in height) and even more pretty. They come in sets, 4/$5, 10/$10 and 30+/$.80 each. So, when you are thinking about gift boxes for Christmas presents, these are great for that and will even fit some small knitted items! Okay enough self promotion :).

We are also getting ready to move in 10 days!! Got the new (old) house and the in laws are coming out to help us make it our own with a little paint and some new drapes. MIL offered to buy these, and told me not be scared to use a little color. HAHAHA, I think she may choke on those words when she sees what I have in store. I went to Home Depot with my mom and cleaned the paint dept. out of paint chips LOL. We are going up on Thursday to paint the deck (FHA wants this done) and I need to fill out my hiring papers, so I will take some pics and post them Friday.

Well off to go sit on the deck in the Beautiful evening air!