bloggers (silent) poetry reading
Today is the Feast of St. Brigid. I'm a little indifferent to most poetry, but there are a few that hold great meaning for me. This one speaks to my roots, my training, my loves and my love. In fact, it was the poem that my older sister read for us at our wedding [my younger sister read a snippet of The Velveteen Rabbit, about being loved until you were worn out, and how that's when you become real].
Scaffolding
Seamus Heaney
Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding;
Make sure that planks won't slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.
And yet all this comes down when the job's done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.
So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me
Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
Confident that we have built our wall.
Out of Habit.
I have totally fallen out of the habit of writing in the blog. There have been lots of goings-on so I'll do my best to update things here. For starters, we're married.
TheBoy is also now TheHusband and apart from being able to call him that (which I do with remarkable ease and regularity) we've determined that we don't feel any different, just less stressed. To pull a reference from Spiral Staircase, I love him more today than yesterday, but not half as much as tomorrow.
Most things went off without a hitch. We had an issue with the first flowers that we ordered, but we were able to get replacements without problem. The weather was less than cooperative--it was sunny but pretty cold. So, instead of dancing we had "gather around the firepit time." It was windy. We had to put up the tents we rented because weather.com was suggesting that we were going to get rain--we didn't --but the tents ended up keeping everyone from having to pick little bits of tree out of their food. The food was fantastic. The cake was beautiful and delicious. We received many wonderful gifts--now we just need to send our thank you notes. We haven't gotten many photos of the event, I'm thinking about mailing cds to some of the folks we know took lots of photos in hopes of getting those back. We're also still waiting on the pro photos and I'm not entirely sure when we'll have those. We spent a few days away from home, but not many. We're taking our honeymoon in August, to go to the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. Yep, we're going to a web comic convention for our honeymoon. We're also going to be visiting friends in the Seattle area at that time.
We bought a new couch. It is giant and comfortable. We then also had to buy a new, smaller coffee table. It is far from giant, but includes a handy drawer for the remote at the end of the day.
We have finally also logged a win in the war against melting that our apartment had engaged us in. Now, the 1970's were a terrible time for energy efficiency in building materials. Aluminum windows were all the rage because they were Cheap. And my apartment complex took that Cheap factor and ran with it. Our west facing wall--which has no shade whatsoever--has two large aluminum slider windows, one that is 4'x6' and one that is 3'x4'. That's a lot of heat gain in the summer with just inexpensive drapes between the sun and us. (It's also a lot of heat loss in the winter, but that's less of an issue because the heat gain from winter sun helps to offset the heat loss from lack of insulation. Plus, I can always put on a sweater. What kind of a knitter would I be if that weren't a welcome option?)
Now, we've lived in this apartment for over three years now and in the summer it's a never ending battle to keep the apartment cool enough to keep us from melting. The first summer we spent a lot of time in the pool. The second summer I wasn't here, TheBoy was living alone while I was in Alaska and he taped paper bags and cardboard over the windows. Yeah, I can't live like that. Last summer saw the arrival of a portable ac unit which helped a great deal but required being moved to the bedroom on days when it was really hot. Yesterday, at 7pm, our apartment was logging in at 86 degrees, which was only a few degrees shy of the outside temperature. I had the ac unit and a box fan chugging as hard as they could and it was barely making a dent. Enter blackout drapery liner fabric from Joann's. It's on the expensive side, but after installing it (we cut it to size and just used the drapery pins to tack it to the back of the ugly cheap drapes) the temperature has been much more comfortable. It's currently 88 degrees outside [and likely to get a little warmer before it cools off for the night] and inside it's 76. Score one for blackout and TheMarrieds! It's much darker in the apartment but by tacking it to the existing drapes we can still open them easily in order to let in sunshine in the morning, before the sun moves to that side of the building.
Knitting news. I am currently in possession of the Charity Blanket Swap blanket. Now that the apartment is cooler I can crank that out and get it on to it's next knitter. I'm also working on the Mystery Stole 3. Signups close sometime today (if they're not already). I've finished chart A and part of chart B, and hope to have charts A-C done by the time the next clue is posted next Friday. I'm waiting for yarn to knit for two new arrivals, a grand-nephew who should be making his debut in October (there is a large age gap between TheBoy and his siblings. His niece is 25 and has been married for something like three years.) There is also a new Minnesotan who is expected to make their debut on the 29th of December, the second child of some very dear friends of mine. And I'm plugging along on a few other things as well, including something that is an extremely nerdy gift for TheBoy. He knows what it is but I'm going to wait to reveal it here on the blog for a bit yet.
Anyone that's in Eugene, there are bagpipers slated to play at Washburne Park on Sunday at 6.30pm. We're planning to be there. Depending on how hot it is, I'll probably have knitting. Leave me a comment if you're planning to be there as well.
Happy Birthday to Me
There's nothing like an impending wedding to make your birthday feel mostly insignificant. But, I've officially entered the latter half of my twenties and we made the last huge arrangements for the wedding today. Now, I just have to stay sane for the next two and a half weeks, including having faith that a. my dress will actually be done on Friday and b. that it will not have to do more alterations on it in the week and a half before I leave town for the actual event.
I am so ready for this all to be done with.
I Vote!
This will be a little bit of a bits and bobs update. Last night TheBoy and I sat down with our voter guides and our Oregon mail-in ballots and voted. It was fun, like taking a take-home test. I would review the measure and the letters in support and opposition and then cast my vote. I got to take my time and not worry that someone was waiting impatiently behind me. However, I do worry a little bit that my vote won't ultimately be counted, but I have as much assurance of that as everyone else does right now. It's a sad state of things.
My simple knitted bodice body is done. I am done with the lace on one sleeve but boy, are sleeves kind of boring. In other knitting news, I ordered some yarn for mitts for TheBoy. He's been pulling his sleeves down over his hands to hold the steering wheel in the car in the mornings because we've had an unseasonably cold snap for the past week or so. That means he gets mitts to solve that problem. They'll be black and orange which is perfect since he loves the color combination and it's the colors of his alma mater; Oregon State. I also want to get started on some tall socks from my natural dyed yarn [more about that soon.] They will be stripey and fun I think. And I need to finish the second sock in the pair for TheBoy.
My wedding dress arrived in the mail the other day, a month and a half earlier than expected. It's in good condition, no worse for it's cross-country trek and it's even more beautiful than I remember it being. There's something about a dress that no one else has ever tried on that makes it a little fresher if nothing else. The beading also seems shinier and prettier. TheFabulousKristi will be coming over on Saturday to lace me into it and ooh and ahh over it. I'm looking forward to that.
TheFabulousKristi and I are also planning on seeing The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D. I've actually never seen the movie, nor have I ever seen a movie in 3D so it should be great fun. TheBoy is likely going to go with us, and then TheBestMan will be over for a visit since he's got to come partway downstate for a test.
My Christmas shopping is somewhere near 30% done. We started in August and I recently placed a few orders with places like amazon.com and a few different etsy sellers. For those of you that haven't heard of etsy.com it's a great place to get some really quality handmade goods. Like everything else online there's some crap but a lot of quality items as well. I recommend checking it out for your holiday shopping needs.
Friendly Neighborhood Hero.
I have great friends. On Wednesday night, I printed and put together a sample of our save-the-date cards. And hated it. It was going to be a lot of work and was going to look "crafty" in a not-so-very good kind of way. So, yesterday morning, I rearranged my digital files for a new format and decided to look into just printing them as postcards. Yes, I know it's boring, but my brilliant non-postcard idea didn't look classy enough. [Because people are flying in from all over the country it would be really tacky of us not to send save-the-date cards as well.] At any rate, I started looking into places to print online. Many places have a minimum order of 500. I need 65, max. So, I looked into another online printing company from whom I could buy 100 for approximately $55 since it was my artwork, [that $55 included shipping.] Now, the online printing company in question only does online proofs. This wouldn't be a problem but their online proofs simply spit back a pdf of the documents that you have uploaded. I couldn't be sure that the front side and back side would print in correct alignment. So, last night I got in touch with TheBoy's best friend [he's TheBestMan in the wedding] who happens to work at a graphics shop. And he said he could print exactly what we'll need, and now I know they won't get screwed up! Huzzah for TheBestMan! So, instead of sending my money away to benefit some LargeInternetCorporation, I'm putting it into the [relatively] local, family-run graphics shop. I'm much happier spending my money that way.