Just a note:

Watch your page views. It'll be a while, but if you happen to hit 22908, take a screen shot and send me an email.

>.>

<.<


Just saying.

Rainbow Connection

Mr. Sweetie saw a rainbow today.

Because of his color blindness, he doesn't usually see them. It's not the hues that are the trouble, but the lightness - if it gets too light, it's all white to him. Because of this, today's dark and stormy skies were a perfect backdrop for what may be only the second or third rainbow that my Mr. Sweetie has seen in his entire life. We were driving over to a friend's house when we saw it, and pulled over to take a good, long look (and snap a couple of pictures - new digital camera!).

This week I plan to clean my house, and then take picture upon picture of works in progress, finished objects, failed objects (yes, I'm talking to you, Dragon Scarf), and stash yarn (mostly for Ravelry, I'll admit). I will also be relaxing, playing video games, designing a new pattern or two, writing up an old one or two, and making sweet, sweet love to that man of mine.

In general, enjoying married life.

Rainbow days are good days.

Married!

So, the wedding was fabulous. We found a new place to do my hair (A Wild Hair on University, great place, great people, did me and a few other members of the bridal party with nothing but smiles!), TwinSister did my makeup, with FavoriteAunt's swanky mineral stuff (evidently this stuff is a big deal?), more people showed up than we had anticipated, but everyone could sit and everyone was fed, and the food was FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC (or so I hear, I had three bites of fabulous chicken and that was about it). The music was all a hit, the people were nice and there was no blood sport to speak of.

Galveston was finished and wonderful, I got tons of compliments on him (and I am a whore for compliments, make no mistake - I also told TwinSister to give me a year's notice on her wedding if she wanted a shawl), and all the little kids were safely kept from tantrum-inducing boredom by the oh-so-simple addition of nerf guns at the reception.

We got a ton of pictures, some of which are even developed, and since none of you people know who any of these folks are, I'm going to post a small shot of LittlestBrother that, in my mind, sums up the entire night.



Seriously, this is what the groomsmen did all night, shot each other up with nerf guns.

So yes, all in all it was fabulous. Everyone went home or arranged their own hotel room (none of which were in the same one as ours, thankfully), and we got a bunch of really awesome gifts. Like, a BUNCH of awesome gifts, you have no idea.

At the end of the night, though, it all boils down to one thing:



About goddamn time.

Galveston Complete - Wedding Pending

Well, Galveston was finished last Thursday - finished, blocked, ends in and all done. It's a good feeling. The only things that are left to do is find a new place to do the hair and makeup, buy shoes and a garter, and pay the caterer. The most pressing of these, unfortunately, being the hair and makeup.

So, my sister found me a place in town where I had been before to get a massage, and she made me an appointment for the hair and makeup, on the day of the bachelorette party, which was yesterday. So I show up, and I tell the lady what I was wanting, and she starts going on and on about how no, that won't work, it'll look bad on my face, I need something like this, and she's curling, and cutting, and backcombing (I hate backcombing; have I ever mentioned that I hate backcombing?), and I'm telling her that that's not really what I want, I don't want big poofy hair with tons of curls, Sweetie has the curls and I don't really want us to match in that way, and she's going, and keeps turning me away from the mirror so I can't even see what she's doing, and she freaking BURNS MY FACE WITH THE CURLER because she's talking on her cell phone instead of watching the giant hot thing in her hand (it's not a big burn, but goddamn). Anyway, she finally turns me to the mirror, and I started crying, because I had this giant curly poofy thing on my head, which was not what I wanted at all, and I am absolutely terrified of this woman and her metal wand of pain, so I go through her magazines and find a picture of what I want and say, this one, this one is what I want, and so she starts all over again, and it took TWO HOURS, and the whole time she's still making it big and poofy and giant ringlet curls, until finally I got to the point where I said it was fine, anything, I didn't even want the makeup, anything so I could LEAVE, and the whole thing cost $80, which was double what
it was supposed to have cost, but I got to leave so I was happy. I looked like a fucking moppet.

Luckily for me, it all fell out within ten minutes, and I don't ever have to go back there. K-the-knitter was at the party and recommended a place, which I'll probably check out some time this week. All in all, it was a fun party and an exhausting day, and I'm glad more than anything that this will all be over soon. So very, very soon.

SO. CLOSE.

So, I had done the edging part of the schematic wrong, but that's fixed now. I am so close to being finished I can TASTE IT. I'm just about done with the second ball of the undyed silk from StickChick, but I got three just in case, so I should get a pretty good estimate of the final yardage.

And in other news? I just found out that you can make PDFs on Photoshop. PHOTOSHOP. Do you have ANY IDEA how much easier it is to move around text bits and images and such on photoshop? So yes. Galveston will be done by the wedding, and so should the PDF.

Forging Ahead

Well, it's now 31 days until the wedding, and we finally have a budget! The meeting of the parents went down this weekend, and nobody yelled or killed each other or were rude to Sweetie's folks (you can see by my clever literary trick that by 'nobody' I mean 'my parents').

So, yeah. Since this weekend, we have:
1) Picked out a dress
2) Picked out tuxes
3) Paid for Sweetie's ring
4) Gotten card stock for invites
5) Gotten addresses for invites
6) Made a guest list
7) Made a registry
8) Picked out favors
9) Picked out flowers
10) Picked out centerpieces

And we are in the process of:
1) Finding a new music person
2) Confirming prices with the caterers
3) Finding a photographer
4) Finding someone to do the ceremony
5) Designing invitations
6) Sending said invitations, along with confirming by phone that we DO mean NEXT MONTH.

So, yeah. Good times. Know what else has been doing?

HAH.

Had to upload the file to Flickr at work, and download it to Sweetie's computer at home, but here's the most recent schematic. I'm actually four rows (two pixel-widths) beyond this point, but it's the thought that counts.

Whee!

Galveston Prime is progressing nicely. I finished Chart F on time, and am about halfway through Chart G, which is the last of the body charts. I'm hoping to get ahead by about six to eight rows tomorrow, what with the entire day being free and all, and I may reward myself with a copy of Knitting New Scarves. I have to say, I got that book through interlibrary loan this week, and it's one of the very few books I've seen lately that not only used new techniques, but used them well, with clear explanations, and it impressed the hell out of me. Is it arrogant to say that I'm no longer easily impressed by knitting books? The way the author switches her knitting between one and many layered fabric, I love the way she must think. It's excellent, and will be a great addition to my personal library.

I like my personal library - which I guess isn't all that surprising, given that I'm the one who compiled it. My goal for it (eventually) is that when I die and leave it to whichever friend, relative, or library looks most promising, someone who didn't know how to knit at all would be able to use just the books in my library and teach themselves everything - from the very basics of knit and purl, up to the interesting stuff like designing patterns and doing neat construction tricks like twined knitting and this stuff in New Scarves. One day I may whip it all up into some giant mega-folder like I once did with my tatting tricks (can you believe there are enough tatting tricks to make a 3 page list?), with either an explanation or a note on which book to find it in, but not any time soon I don't think. One of the advantages to working in a library, I also get those neat little magazine holders, so I can even sort my magazines by publisher (interweave and non-interweave is how I ended up doing it), so that's fun. One day I hope to have my own tiny copy of Voyager, which is THE library cataloging software to date, and get all of my books into it.

So, you may have noticed that I have internet now? We bit the bullet and got a cable connection, hooray for us! Granted, it's only on Sweetie's computer at the moment, but I'm going to look into wireless routers so we can set us up a nice home wireless network for when we go to Austin and PrimaryBrother moves in with us (as he likely will).

In other good news, guess what? Sweetie said he wants to learn to knit! Only "to make bags and stuff" at the moment, but I might sit down with him tomorrow and teach him knit and purl. He says he really likes linen, and would like to work with that, so that'll be interesting to teach him on. I think I may take him by the Hook and Needle, to pick out some needles and yarn to learn with. I told him that my stash is his stash (within reason, anyways - I don't see him drooling on the laceweight any time soon), but he might be more motivated to learn if he can start with something he really likes and that he picked himself. I have to be careful not to appear too excited about this, since I don't want to pressure him and scare him off - the knitting must be approached gently, like a skittish gazelle.

Well, I guess I'll be getting back to my own needles for tonight. I was struck last week with extreme paranoia about the knitted-on edging, so I want to get to that as soon as possible so I don't get stuck on it later.

Internet Still Broke

So the apartment complex assures us that the modem that was most affected by the lightning has been replaced, and therefore all should be well, but according to the tech guy who actually fixes things with the wireless company, the receivers on top of the buildings all need replacing, and the apartment complex doesn't want to do that, so no internets for us, until that's done. Since they also decided to start charging for this service that we're not getting, without actually telling us about it first off, we've started looking elsewhere. I'm thinking cable internet - something reliable and fast. I'm tired of the crummy connection we've been getting - the only reason we kept up with it is that it was free, and now? I don't even care. I'll gladly drop $60 a month for something that doesn't crap out on me. Consider it my soda budget, and I'll cut down on that as well.

In other news, I fell about two days behind on Galveston, but I'm going home early to work on it, and will grind on it all weekend. Here's that schematic I was talking about:

Internet down again, posting from work

Our internet tower was hit by lightning over the holiday break, and it's still not back up.

Galveston Prime update: Finished with Chart E, and about halfway through Chart F. I'm keeping caught up with the 2k a day, so I should finish Chart F on friday. Whee! I added the next ball of the undyed silk from StickChick.etsy.com (her stuff is great, check it out when you get a chance), which means that Galveston is already over 1000 yards long! I'm also about halfway done with the shawl in general, which means that my projected yardage was WAYYY off. I didn't know how much to get for a design I was making up myself, so I looked up the yardage for Frost Flowers, a shawl that I figured would be about the same size when all's said and done, which was 3600 yards, and I rounded up to 4000 (just in case). Yeah. Probably more along the lines of 2200-2500, as it turns out. Good to know, though, that I've got enough for one large and one small Galvy.

I made an updated schematic, but it is of course at home. With the no-internets. I'll try and get that up when I can.

In wedding news, there isn't any! That's right: No money, no concrete plans, no reception hall, no invitations sent, no guest list. I fail at weddings. Largely, I think, because of the no money part: I have no money, ergo, no budget, ergo, cannot reserve a place or send invitations (and that no guest list part helps with that too). I'm seriously thinking to just elope and tell mom if she wanted a wedding she should have had one herself. But that's anther rant.