Too Many Scarves

Happy Halloween!

Fan came over the other night and we carved pumpkins. I had a long day at work though, so I admit it, I went the easy route:

Looks like a child did it, huh? Well, a child old enough to play with sharp objects, that is.

Fan's was a little more involved:

Randy wasn't in the mood, so no pumpkin from him this year.  That's ok though, it was his birthday, so he could do whatever he wanted.

It wasn't the prettiest cake, but it was homemade.

We celebrated his birthday this past weekend with going out to lunch, seeing a movie in the middle of the day (yay!), going through a corn maze(!) and then out to dinner.  We splurged a bit since it was a special occasion.

There we are in the corn. It was a lot of fun...although I could have done without all of the screaming teenage girls. Anyway.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Wedding Post, Part 2

September 8th, 2007. The big day.

It all started with getting pretty...you know, hair and make up. We went to this woman's house in Laguna Beach that Tracey was referred to.  Super cute little cottage-y house right along Pacific Coast Highway.  Tracey was telling some story and getting really into it.

Ha! I love that picture. Anyway, here was the final product for her:

Tracey has a lot of thick hair so it was really different to see it all up and curled, very pretty.

The hairdresser had a kitten, Truffles, that wanted to play with me the whole time Tracey was getting her hair and make up done.  Very cute, but a bit distracting at times. Whenever I would try to take a picture of Tracey the cat would go after the wrist cord thing on my camera.  This is one of the least intrusive pics of her. Most of the others are just a blur of black because she was right up against the lens.

We headed off to the site, Franciscan Gardens in San Juan Capistrano, right down the street from the San Juan Capistrano Mission. Here's what it looked like before everyone showed up:

Here's the inside of the bridal suite. It was huge...a bit more space than the 3 of us needed but we had more than enough stuff to fill it.

Here's Tracey trying to enjoy a drink before the ceremony, I think she may have had a couple of sips. There was too much talking about last minute details to really relax.

Janelle came up and joined us in the suite for a little while. It really was fun in there, don't let the look on her face make you think otherwise.

Onto the ceremony. I don't have one decent picture of Tracey and my dad coming down the aisle on my computer. So let's skip ahead:

There's the vows. Where Tracey almost lost it...and I totally did.

I actually had to pass Tracey's bouquet to Jennifer so I could wipe away the tears. Also, notice how red I am? Could be the crying,  the pre-ceremony drink or the embarrassment from my mom exclaiming "Look how red Stacey is!" as soon as I took my place up front there.  Thanks for pointing that out mom...if they didn't notice before, they do now.

We had to hurry and take this picture before the train came.

The bride's side of the wedding party. Just the 3 of us, our cousin Jennifer, Tracey and I:

Me, Tracey and my brother Scott. He doesn't make many appearances on this here blog. Not the best picture of him, but it's the best I've got from the big day.

My dad and Tracey:

Totally losing it during my maid of honor speech:

The speech that I didn't prepare beforehand. I'm told it went well and that some almost cried.  I'll take that as a good sign.

The father daughter dance:

The cutting of the cake:

The dancing. Just look at me. Waving my arms in the air.

The dress was not easy to dance in. It was too long so I had to constantly hold the hem off the ground. Tracey had put together a good play list for the DJ though so I couldn't resist trying to dance anyway.

I love that picture.  It really was a lovely venue, especially at night with all the lights strung around.

Congratulations to Tracey and Kevin. They make a really great pair that compliment each other and I am so happy for them. Tracey is a wonderful sister and Kevin is going to be a great brother in law. I love you guys.

Wedding Post, Part 1

Ok, so here we go. There has been some nagging around blogging about Tracey's wedding by people that didn't attend but I wanted to take the time and do this right, you know? It took me a while to go through all the pictures but I think I am finally done.

It was three months ago now, but there was a bridal shower. It was held at Tracey's soon to be sister in laws home, a gorgeous house in Dana Point. There was a tea party theme and we were supposed to wear hats. I hoped that if I conveniently didn't bring one I wouldn't have to wear one.  Nope, they were provided for us. Damnit.

You know how you'll come across old pictures of yourself from 10 years ago and think, "What was I thinking with that hairstyle?!"

Yeah, this was 3 months ago. What is that crunchy mess? I guess there is an upside to a hat after all. In my defense, I remember that I didn't have access to a blow dryer and my usual stuff...but really, that is a sad excuse. I've had some bad hair ever since it was bleached all to hell back in March. Anyway, back to the subject at hand, a wedding, not my poor choice of hairstyles.

There was the opening of presents. 

She got pretty much everything on her registry because she didn't register for much. She was telling me and Randy that it's much harder to register for a wedding than you would think. I disagree. I don't think I am going to have any problem with registering. But perhaps some of you that have already gone through this will tell me differently.

My cousin Jennifer was the other bridesmaid and here she is with her daughter,  Brilee. This was the first time I had met Brilee and she really is cute. It's funny how much she looks like Jennifer when she was a baby. 

There was some catching up between people who haven't seen each other since high school. That's Jenna, Janelle and Nicole.

There was more time to catch up at the Bachelorette party though.  We drove down to San Diego for a little drinking and dancing. Ok, a lot of drinking and dancing.

We went to a piano bar in the Gaslamp District where the only thing I remember is that we had bad service. While I felt sorry for our server at the time because I felt like he was overextended, I found out later he was out of line and made an extremely rude comment to my cousin Jennifer.

Another theme among these wedding posts is how red I get when I drink, get embarrassed or nervous.

Just look at me. I am almost as pink as the trim on Nicole's dress. That's Kim in the middle there.

Tracey's obligatory tongue out picture. I'm going to say I have about 100 pictures of her with her tongue out. I don't know how it happens. It is an ongoing joke for her.   

The always photogenic Janelle, Tracey and Jenna. Jenna really needed a good night out because she is a single mom of two daughters, both under the age of two.

I think she got it.

Dancing and more drinking at a club down the street. This is the least embarrassing picture I can post. Also, most of us probably couldn't operate a camera very well after this point. It felt like we were at the club for a half hour but later we figured out it was more like 3 hours. It flew by. I didn't sit down once.

It was so much fun though. I don't go out much these days (and didn't do it much when I was younger either actually) so it's fun to go out and do it big on occasion. And what a better occasion than my twin sister getting married?  :)

The big day in the next post...

Super secret project revealed!

I got the phone call from Brenda that the package was received so I can finally reveal the super secret baby project! Yay! Remember this?

Well, a few months later it is done. Here it is:

A skull and crossbones baby blanket! Brenda told me that she was planning on having a pirate themed nursery and right away I knew I wanted to do something with a skull and crossbones to fit the theme.  For the skull I used the chart from the Domiknitrix site and I just made the bones up. Which is why they look more like baseball bats. I justify this by thinking that the blanket will rarely be laying flat like this so they won't be noticeable.

I have hopes that this blanket will last years to come and little Nathan drags it around the house with him when he starts walking because he can't bear to part with it. (By the way Brenda, it is completely machine washable. )

Another FO...

Gretel is done.  I didn't even have a chance to mention that I started it. It was that fast.

 

This was a really fun pattern to work with. Since there are so many cables, it's always interesting. There was always something going on.

I originally made the slouchy version, but it was too much for me. I ripped back and fixed a mistake on one of the cables while I was at it, thankfully. It would have driven me crazy every time I looked at it.  I carried on with the regular, non slouchy version and it turned out fabulously.

It needs a blocking to make the slight point of the top settle down a bit, but otherwise I am quite happy. One of my favorite knits to date.

It's beginning to look like fall...

And a little festivity to the knitting cubbie:

One project at a time...

I mentioned a couple of posts back how I was going to try and focus on one knitting project at a time...and you know what? I'm doing it. And it's great. I am more determined to finish something quickly if I know that as soon as I finish, I can start the next project.

A month or so ago I had about 4 things going on at once.  I had the super secret baby project for my friend Bren (which is now finally on it's way via USPS), Backyard Leaves, a pair of socks for a former co-worker and  a little knit camera case for my brother. I would work on something for a bit, but then feel bad because I had a "deadline" for something else so I would put down the project to work on the other, then I'd get bored and move onto the next, blah blah blah...

I got frustrated. I finished the super secret project (which will be blogged about as soon as she gets it).  Once I put all my attention on it I finished it up in less than a week. Total time spent on it? About 3 months.  After checking that off my list I moved onto Backyard Leaves.

I finished that up, blocked it and had it seamed also within a week.  Phew.

I finished up my brothers case in a matter of hours. Done.

I realized I had made a mistake with my friends socks. I frogged them completely and started over.  I cast on again and finished them 3 days ago. They are blocked and ready to go.  I am really looking forward to seeing her reaction to these socks. They are the Campfire Socks from Cider Moon.

Earlier this summer I would work on my campfire socks while I was on break at work and this girl would ask about knitting. I guess she had tried it, but it didn't really stick. She said she really wanted to make socks.

This girl was really an amazing worker, someone that even though I hadn't worked with her long, I really admired her work ethic and style. There we were, in the same store, the store that I would come home from and cry because it was so hectic and she was holding it all together, taking it in stride. I won't really get into everything for the sake of some anonymity, but she really helped me out there.  How ever to repay her?  Socks of course.

I made them a little shorter because I really thought I was going to run out of yarn. I always do this with socks.  And I always have plenty. You'd think I would learn.

I really like them..but I will part with them..just because I like this girl that much  ;)