While there were a couple of glitches with the food, everything else apparently went well and a good time was had by all. I only have photos from my sister (so far) with many more promised… and a lengthy entry will be made with all the details and a bunch of photos - later. I’ve been packing and shipping gifts and stuff from college and stuff from her room, and I’m trying to work, and catch up on sleep and a multitude of things, but here’s a photo of the wedding party to tide you over.

The flower girls were beautiful and did a fabulous job. All the groomsmen were handsome and the bridesmaids and matron of honor were gorgeous. Of course, the bridal couple were glowing with love.

It’s Cookie A., the fabulous sock designer!

Cookie was teaching two, one-half day classes at Needlework Unlimited this week. I signed up for the morning class on toe-up socks. There are some nice designs out there for toe up socks, but I like the heel-flap-and-gusset socks as they fit my feet better and as far as I know knew, the toe up socks use short row heels

I learned that Cookie also prefers top down socks and that the heel-flap-and-gusset socks were her favorite socks for a good fit! However, we learned to start a sock from the toe, and we actually had a flap-and-gusset type heel turn. We only made a mini-sock (she’s holding mine in the photo), but I’m anxious to try this on a full-sized sock. The only problem is that I still don’t have a down-and-dirty, quick-and-easy way to find how long to make the sock before turning the heel. Cookie had a wonderful handout which included lots of numbers and formulas to calculate all this for you, but I had been hoping for a “knit until 2″ shorter than foot length” type of instruction.

Cookie was a thorough instructor, and I enjoyed her class. She graciously signed copies of her patterns that class members had purchased at the shop. Unfortunately, I bought all of mine online through her website store (and I didn’t bring them). I didn’t get up the nerve to tell her I was one of her beta testers for the website store….

In other knitting news, I have finished and blocked the MysticLight shawl:

Modeled by my lovely DD.

A photo while blocking.

And a close-up for you lace addicts. :)  This yarn is so hard to photograph!

Pattern: MysticLight shawl by Anna Dalvi (no modifications)

Yarn: Dream In Color Smooshy, Dusky Aurora. About 1.5 skeins

Needles: Size 6 (4.0 mm)

 I would probably knit this again, but there are more “Mystic” lace projects coming, plus I haven’t finished MysticWaters yet. The shawl is now off to the County Fair, hopefully to win a ribbon!

Sorry for the abrupt topic change, but no segue here that I can find: 

Two weeks ago, my knitting came up during the Sunday sermon…sort of.

Our church has a Thursday night service (during the summer), and with the family involvement in getting the sermons up on the web, both Chris and Dave were at the Thursday service. When they came home, they said I had to wear a particular t-shirt to church on Sunday. The ‘joke’ written on it isn’t exactly what I would wear to church, but they insisted and I agreed. Since we have our new pastor, John Erbele, and his attire is ‘relaxed’ I thought I wouldn’t stand out too much. When I got to church I was terribly self-conscious wearing this t-shirt. However, no one seemed to notice. I sat during the service, wondering how my shirt fit into the sermon. It finally came near the end: John was talking about anger, and how sometimes we speak out in anger and that we can hurt people so we should watch our language, watch how we speak to people, and that on occasion, we may have to “stick a sock in it” — meaning stick a sock in our mouth to avoid saying things we shouldn’t. He frequently uses sermon props, and this was no exception: every person received a child-sized white sock to remind them to “stick a sock in it.” Finally I understood why Dave and Chris insisted I wear my t-shirt! So after the service, we had John take a good look at my shirt. He laughed and said it was great! We decided to take a “sock” picture, so here we are - John holding my sock-in-progress (Embossed Leaves), and I’m holding the sermon prop sock.

Ok, so it’s a long story and not that funny - but it was fun at the time!

I know John’s head is chopped off in the photo… but it really was the better photo (of 2) for both of us with facial expressions, and besides - he’s pretty tall!

Last, but not least, my time has been taken up with wedding plans and details. This week was the last shower for Molly, put on by Colleen, Jenny, Carol and Pat and opened to the congregation at SSEFC where Molly will be married (next week!) and where we attended for many years. It was a very nice shower and it was wonderful to see all these lovely ladies again. (JoAnne arrived later and I didn’t get her in the photo.)

I’m sure no other blogging will be done until after the Big Event. Lots of pictures of that will be coming soon!

OK, not exactly.

We had another great craft weekend in St. Cloud. Diane, Molly, Debbie, Pat and I spent the weekend at our craft retreat. It was the first time for Debbie and Pat, but I think they had alot of fun and we all would like to do it again. We decided to bring our own food for breakfast and lunches, but that we’d eat dinners out to get a break. On Friday night, we headed over to Space Aliens, a surprisingly good restaurant that had a wide variety of foods, but a play area and theme that is more like Chucky Cheese.

They had enormous desserts that also earned tokens to play the games.

We split the desserts and the tokens and had a wonderful evening. We “bought” some souvenirs with our tickets (pencils and pads of paper with aliens on them), and Pat gave her 414 tickets to a young boy. It turned out that it was his birthday, and with her tickets he was able to “purchase” hockey sticks!

I bought some quilting kits for baby quilts (one boy and one girl) and will hopefully have those finished by the time I have grandchildren to give them to!

Diane was the only one quilting - finishing a quilt top over the weekend!

Molly and Debbie did some scrapbooking

Pat worked on crocheting (starting a 7-hour afghan that wasn’t done in 7 hours….) and I worked on my knitting. I finally had space and time to block the Hanami for my sister:

Here’s a closeup of the cherry blossom side:

and I worked on my Mystic Light shawl. I “finished” the charted portion, then decided I had made an error and ripped two rows once I got home. I have now finished all the knitting, and will be blocking soon (I hope). Here’s a photo that *finally* shows the true colors!

We had lots of fun and laughed all weekend. A fabulous and relaxing time!

We attended the graduation ceremonies at MIT on Friday, June 6, 2008.

There are over 12,000 people all in one place, and the only place large enough is Killian Court - an outdoor venue. The ceremony is held in any weather conditions, other than electrical storm or hail. We arrived shortly before 9 a.m. for the ceremony which was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. It had been raining for quite some time, and all the chairs had puddles of water on them. They handed out rain ponchos until they ran out - umbrellas were forbidden (during the ceremony, to keep from blocking the view of others around you).

Of course, the covered portion was for the staff and speakers.

Naturally, all 12,000+ people can’t be close enough for picture-taking and a ‘real’ view, so they set up jumbo-trons so you could see what was going on. Unfortunately, we didn’t think this through, and we were on the other side of the main aisle, so our view was frequently blocked by people going up and down the aisle. We did see Molly when she received her diplomas though! (Yes, I said diplomas. Multiple. You knew she was a smart kid, right? Two separate Bachelor of Science degrees. Apparently many of her friends received two degrees as well.) We also saw “that Chris kid” graduate with his Master’s degree. We were positioned very well to see them both march in:

The graduates:

And the obligatory parental photos:

Here’s Molly and Julia at the Department reception for the graduates:

And the photo of Molly and Kate - roommates for four years and fabulous friends forever

We are so proud of you all!

Here’s the dorm gang

They all decided they wanted one last gathering, so the graduates and families headed out to a local Italian restaurant for dinner together - and of course, another photo of the gang

(Sorry for the freaky red eyes!)

We had a lovely dinner and the chance to meet all the kids Molly had been telling us about for four years. All the kids came over and introduced themselves, and we were able to connect the stories we heard with the person. That was the end of the “scheduled” activities for us, but on Saturday we met with the soon-to-be in-laws. They helped the kids pack up their dorm rooms, then took us out to the aquarium and then to dinner. Chris’s uncles were there as well, and they treated us all to dinner. It was nice to have the opportunity to meet the extended family before the wedding. 

It’s hard to believe that the four years at MIT are over. There is another graduation in store, however - just three short years away - as Molly graduates from law school.

In the meantime, perhaps this will be MIT’s graduation speaker next year…..?

Anyway, this pattern’s inspiration is spring meadows, and is a fingering weight stole pattern. I’ve chosen this yarn:

The colors are similar to the Smooshy yarn (Dusky Aurora) I chose for the Mystic Light KAL, but much lighter. I think there’s some very pretty colors that remind me of a spring garden. :)  I think the KAL starts the first week of June, so I’m all set to go. Meantime, I am working (slowly) on finishing the Mystic Light shawl, as well as working on a couple of pairs of mittens for the Mitten Blitz (charity contribution). Oh yeah, not to mention working on the invitations for the wedding. And getting ready to attend graduation in Boston. And working.

I’m behind on posting (duh -what’s new) but here’s what I have:

This is (most of) Clue 1. Couldn’t quite manage to get the tips in, but you can see most of the design. There is a small cable that runs along the bottom (which will be the top, long edge of the finished triangular shawl), and a cabled braid (or braided cable?) that runs vertically through the center.

This is Dream In Color Smooshy, in Dusky Aurora colorway. This yarn is extremely hard to photograph and get an honest color rendering. In the skein, I thought I saw purple, blue, teal, some greenish color, etc. but I don’t see much in the knit up portions nor in the cake. (Although there is a photo further down that shows more color variation.) The yarn does live up to it’s reputation that it does not pool or do the funky, undesirable things that varigated/hand painted yarns do.

This is a close-up of clue 1, showing the center braid and some of the color but this shows mostly purple and blue. This is what it looks like as I’m working on it….although I occasionally see a patch of teal/bright blue.

This is clue 2 completed. I’m having far less trouble as I go along (less frogging) as the usual culprit is not on the chart but rather is every even row for the cables & yo’s and I’m finally getting to the point that those are second nature.

Here’s the photo where you can see some real color play, and that it is actually more than just dark blue and purple:

I hope it shows the colors on your monitor!

I’m starting clue 3 tonight - each clue gets a few rows shorter, but since you’re adding stitches on each row, the rows are longer so overall it’s about the same number of stitches.

For those of you who don’t know, the designer’s name is Anna Dalvi, and she also designed MysticWaters. I have only finished clue 1 on that, but the design is beautiful and I have every intention of finishing. When I discovered that Anna was doing another design, I jumped right in! While I often wait a clue or two to decide if I want to knit the surprise/mystery KAL, I knew after MysticWaters that I didn’t need to hang back on MysticLight. Anna plans to continue and will have an entire series of the elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. The MysticLight is the fire element, but Anna’s design has combined different kinds of light - fire and stars, too. I chose the Dusky Aurora because the color on their website reminded me of the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) and because this was a colorway that I would wear. (While I am attracted to reds/yellows/oranges that others were using to represent the fire, I would likely never wear a shawl that color ….)

More progress as I complete this…. in the meantime, keep on knitting!

I had a wonderful birthday, starting with breakfast with the family. The Monday before my birthday, the Caribou knitting gang had a little birthday party as there are 4 of us that have birthdays within a week of each other. Surprisingly, several of them had birthday gifts for me! (We generally don’t exchange gifts.)

Aimee gave me the “Denim” blue sock yarn on the left. This has Alpaca in it. I think it’s a new yarn she got at work. Valerie gave me the “Monkeysuits” book - lots of funky kid’s outfits. Definitely something to knit when grandkids come along. ;)  Lynn gave me the Araucania sock yarn on the right and a set of Hiya Hiya dpns (size 1, my favorite for socks). We had talked about Hiya Hiya needles once, and I said I had seen so much in the sock groups I’m on that Hiya Hiya were so great, and that I should buy a set and give them a try - so she bought them for me! The yarn is a brand I’ve never tried before (I think it might be new, too) and has quite a few different colors in it, so I’m anxious to see it knit up. The photo doesn’t do it justice - lots of purple, but also some really bright green, blue and turquoise. I also managed to get a couple of very fun birthday cards which I enjoyed tremendously!

It was fun to be spoiled a bit by my knitting friends. Thanks, everyone!

Here’s my finished Zombie socks:

Not the best photo, but I was trying to hurry to get the post done to make it before the deadline.

I have to say I’m not a fan of color pooling. While I love the look of varigated yarns while in the hank or skein, I’m not too wild with how they look knitted up.  I’m also more a fan of the symmetrical pair of socks or mittens, etc., so when the colors pool differently so I can’t make the pair look very similar I get irritated. These did not match, although as a pair I think they’re kind of funky!

For those of my fellow Sock Madness folks who stopped by to encourage me and cheer me on, I give you a heartfelt “thanks.” It sure made me feel like continuing to knit on these, even though they went sooooo slooow. Thanks for being my ‘cheerleader!’

This year, our first pattern is Zombie Socks.

Again, there is a person who finished both socks in less than 24 hours. Huh. I’ll never be that fast.

This pattern, while not difficult, didn’t come intuitively to me at first. It’s also a lot like a ribbed sock, so there’s lots of knit and purl, which sure slows me down. Plus, I’m putting in hours to catch up on work, and have little stamina to knit much per day.

One of our vendors, Laurie, when told that I was “doing better” asked, “yes, but is she knitting yet?” Ah, and there’s the gist of it. I actually went about 10 days without knitting at all!

We were told to choose a “scary” color for our Zombie socks — that left my mind a blank! I finally chose KnitPicks Memories, in the Cape Cod colorway (line and color discontinued, sorry!), and I’m using Brittany size 1 (2.25 mm) needles.

The first sock is done, and I’m on the leg of the 2nd sock. Amazingly, there are still spots open on my team, so I still have hopes of squeaking into round 2. Hopefully that one will go faster for me, or I’m definitely out again. :(  This year, however, they are doing some ’side’ contests on the appearance of the socks, and those contests are open to folks who’ve been eliminated from the original contest (as well as the folks still competing), so there’s some incentive for those who are “out” to continue to knit along with the rest of the competitors. This will help to keep the conversation boards lively, too — last year, as the competition wound down to just a few competitors, a lot of the chatter went away and it just wasn’t as fun so I’m looking forward to this year’s group and competition.