shawl

I’ve made a decent dent into my wedding shawl knitting. I’ve got to the lace sections now and even though I have three pages of charts (because there are three different lace patterns) to follow if I need them, I seem to be just fine reading my knitting and working out what to knit that way. I’m loving the lace sections. Patterning on every row is just so much fun. Plus it makes the lace look really delicate.

I also really like the teeny tiny star shape that the circular cast on method created. It’s the small details like that make me really happy. I’m probably the only one who’ll notice it, but just knowing it’s there is enough. The same usually applies to mistakes too, though. If I know it’s there, it’ll drive me nuts, even if no one else notices it.

Practice dress #2 is fairly far along. Before I insert the sleeves and the zip, I think I need to figure out if I want to alter the neckline at all. Right now it’s a plain round neck fairly close to my throat and well… I’m not used to having anything that close to my neck. So I’m possibly going to change it to a scoop neck. And maybe add in bias binding to the neckline and the hem. But so far the fit seems good, so I think I’ll be sticking with these particular pattern pieces (I’ve taken the bodice from one dress pattern and the skirt of another) for my wedding dress. I’ve also got grand plans for details for the wedding dress to hide things like possibly slightly wonky seams, because let’s face it, I’m not a professional dressmaker. Now I just need to find the things I’m thinking of adding to it.

We have the venue and the registrar booked! And we’ve got an appointment for the notice of marriage for next week. Things are moving on nicely. And my stress levels have definitely lowered a lot ever since we booked the venue. That was my biggest worry. Now I can concentrate on the fun things! Like my dress and the decorations. And figuring out what music to play in the background while guests are arriving. I recently found a list of photos that would be great to have but might be forgotten since they’re not traditionally on lists. Most of them seemed reasonable, but two of them really weren’t applicable to my wedding: “Groom 5 hours before the wedding” and “Bride 5 hours before the wedding.” Uhm… yeah. That would be at 7am. I don’t think we’ll be wanting a photographer to be showing up that early.