Motivation

So for our wedding gifts to each other Josh and I each bought ourselves something we'd been wanting.  I knew I wanted some nicer yarn than most of what I use (whatever JoAnn's sells...) but wanted a decent amount so nothing too expensive.  I got this:

29 skeins of KnitPicks yarns. :)  Bulky all the way down to fingering.  I have things planned for 3-4 of the colors already and bought them with their projects in mind.  The bulky on the left will be the Twenty-Ten Cardigan.  The green and/or brown in the middle will be the Folded pullover.  And the light blue barely visible in the middle will be Kalajoki socks.  I'm not sure about the rest, but the colors were too much to resist.  And one of the colorways was on sale because it was being discontinued, so how could I resist? ;)

I got this for Christmas from my aunt:

It's actually a bit darker than the photo shows.  I think it's going to be the Tamarind Cowl.

Anyhow, all of this is to say that I'm extremely motivated to finish things I have started already because I don't want to start more new things!  I did make a little bag out of some leftover sock yarn (and still didn't finish it, which was the goal)... But otherwise, nothing new.  So I'm working again on my crocheted blanket I started ages ago, I'm working again on the sweater for Josh that I started at least a year ago, and I have a Christmas present to finish for my in-laws (need to get more embroidery thread before I can finish though) and a birthday present for my grandmother.  I also have a baby sweater that I started for a friend but will finish for my new little niece or nephew next month.  I'm feeling so productive right now!  Granted, it should be school-productive, not crafty-productive, but what can you do? ;) :)

Day trip

We took a little day trip up north today.  Josh is applying for new jobs so we went to turn in a resume and just made a day of it.

The view outside the restaurant we had lunch at:

 Josh was a good sport and humored me by getting out of the car for pictures:

The little harbor:

I've never driven the Mackinac Bridge before (I've always just been a passenger).  It's a little nerve-wracking, but I made it.  The clouds over the bridge were amazing so I had Josh take pictures.  He had a lot of fun with them:

That's me white-knuckle driving, laughing at him for taking my picture.  Fun times. :)

We came home and the sky was looking like this outside our apartment.  :)  We don't have snow (maybe this weekend I hear), but we have this sky.  You really can't beat that. :)

Good Things

So it's been a little while.  I've finished my third semester of grad school; one to go!  It was my best semester yet, amazingly.  It was a crazy, hectic, wonderful last month or so.

Most importantly...

 (all pictures via nicoleladonne.com/blog my wonderful photographer!)

I got married.  I could really not have asked for a better wedding and a better man to get married to. :)  It hasn't even been a week and I'm just thrilled.  Here's to many wonderful years ahead of us!!!

Embroidered Cover #3

 My third and final cover for the Covered in Stitches contest.  It ended Monday, I finished this late Sunday.  You didn't think I'd do a book cover contest and not do an Anne cover, did you? :)  Green Gables and Anne are both on white linen.  Green Gables I stitched through both the white and blue and you can see a bit of the white around the edges.  Anne I appiqued on in entirely; a tiresome process, but sooo worth it in the end.  I think she looks pretty fabulous.  I used the text from the movie and just back-stitched it.

 The illustration from the Anne of Green Gables Treasury alongside my piece. :)

 A close up of Anne.

 Green Gables.  You can see the white around the edges.  Ignore the blue, I took the photos before I cleaned it.  The trees and bushes are felt with french knot flowers.  The tree trunks are just sort of satin stitched, but not in a smooth way so that they'd look more tree like.  The roof threads are woven through each other.  The grass by the house is the raw edge of the green fabric. :)

Embroidered Cover #2

I don't know if you're all familiar with Persephone Books.  They're the ones that re-published Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, the basis for the movie with Amy Adams and Frances McDormand (which I loved, book and movie).  They publish out of print books by mainly female writers; they're nearly all published with just a plain dove grey cover (their Persephone Classics get an artsy cover).  Everything I've read through them I've loved in one way or another.  Miss Pettigrew was wonderful and light and fun, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Stratchey was wonderful but a bit heart-breaking, and so on.  The one that's stuck with me the most was Manja by Anna Gmeyner, book no. 39.

From their website, "Written in London by a young Austrian playwright in exile, Manja opens, radically, with five conception scenes one night in 1920. Set in the turbulent Germany of the Weimar Republic, it goes on, equally dramatically, to describe the lives of the children and their families until 1933 when the Nazis came to power. 'What is so unusual,' wrote the playwright Berthold Viertel in 1938, 'is the way the novel contrasts the children's community - in all its idealism, romanticism, decency and enchantment - with the madhouse community of the adults.'"  This book is quite long - over 500 pages - but reads so well.  You go between all the children at various points and see how their lives all connect and intersect and how they're all tied together.  It's also amazing in that it was written before World War II started, yet shows the horror of the Nazis already.  It's a beautiful book, but terribly sad too.  I read it in 2010 and still think about it.  I really highly recommend it.

Because of all of this, Manja was the next book I made a cover for for the contest mentioned previously.  I loved doing the cover and since the book has the dove grey cover it left it completely up to me.  This is what I came up with:

"She wanted to leave a sign behind for her friends, when they came here a little while later.  She couldn't find anything suitable.  In the end she took out her scarf and tied it round the birch tree.  It looked sad and stupid.  But she left it."  -p. 520

While it's not a birch tree, I love this tree and loved layering each branch over others.  It was challenging but rewarding.  I love this.  It's perfect for the book.

New Things

We have a new kitty!  We got her exactly one month ago today, and she was about 6 weeks old when we got her.  Her name's Curious George Eliot and she's absolutely wonderful and crazy and a pain in the butt.  I adore her.  This was her on day one:

 And these are her yesterday:

 She's grown so much.  She's not that little fluff ball we adopted anymore.  She's getting all sleek and shiny and already seems so big.  She's such a crazy little thing too though.  She bounces off every surface and attacks the carpet or a bit of fuzz.  She chases her tail and jumps and flips.  When she's been in her cage for the night or when we're not home and she's let out again, she'll follow you everywhere.  Sometimes I think she's afraid of her own shadow.  She's wonderful.  Oh George. :)

I'm participating in Feeling Stitchy's contest for embroidered book covers.  It's inspired by Penguin's new book covers for Emma, The Secret Garden, and Black Beauty.  So far I've done this one from Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies:

I'm really proud of this.  I actually had traced this cover weeks ago because I think it's just an awesome cover, and then there's this contest that ties in perfectly.  I'm definitely a book person though, so it's not such a stretch for me. :)  I tried to use a bunch of different stitches, and it's *all* stitched.  The hair is raised stem stitch, the jewellery and top of the dress is satin stitch, the skin and bottom of the skirt are chain stitch.  The black around the jewellery and in the picture is all back stitch and the whole thing is outlined in stem stitch.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  It's really cool. :)  I have a few more ideas ready to go that will have bits of applique and stitching combined.  Hopefully they'll turn out as well as this one.

Long time no see

So it's been a while.  It hasn't been terribly exciting here lately overall.  Though, my awful roommate moved out and my fiance moved in. :)  The apartment's definitely more cozy when you don't have to worry about running into the other person, and there's more stuff and it's just friendlier feeling in general.  It's awesome. :)  Though, we've been wedding planning, going back and forth between a fairly big, regular wedding and basically just eloping.  We're going to have the regular, nice wedding and hope that being near Christmas not so many people will come (my issue with the regular wedding is how big it was getting).  We've got the church and photographer and are about to send out save the dates (which I know are, like, months late...), and I have my dress.  That's it.  This is way more complicated and stressful than I wanted.  I just want to marry him, I don't want all this fuss, lol!

I haven't been terribly productive lately.  I haven't knit really at all lately.  I've been cross stitching again lately, and embroidering - which I love because I can whip things out in a day or so depending on size.  One of the embroideries was a gift that was just given so I couldn't share until now. :)

The gift for my wonderful friend, Mandy, and her new husband, Steve:

 This I made because I loved the text of it (found here on flickr) and wanted to keep embroidering things.  It's the author's note to Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh:

 A close up of the stem stitch outline:

 Not completely done yet (I still have to wash it), but I just loved this t-shirt on Cafe Press or something and wanted to do the illustration:

 And last but definitely not least me and the gorgeous bride from this past weekend, and then a wonderful one of her in the mirror :) :

Congrats again to Mandy and Steve! :)