It’s been one year since Rob and I got married.

We got married in Buffalo, where my family is from. It was somewhat difficult to plan the wedding - I’m not much of a wedding planner type, and there are many sucky things in Buffalo, especially regarding weddings. Also, there weren’t a ton of resources to plan it from afar, but we found some quality Buffalonians on the web. Hopefully this info will help someone with their planning!

• We got married at the Delaware Park Casino. It kicked ass. In late May, their rose garden was a gigantic tulip garden, and was gorgeous. You have to be pretty careful with the weather in Buffalo that early in the summer, but we lucked out and the ceremony was beautiful.
• Our flowers were from Thrive Flowerstudio. Trish was great to work with and the flowers were funky and beautiful.
• Wendy Mitchell was our photographer. She was super fun and personable and took great photos.

These guys all rocked and are definitely recommended. We also had some awesome musicians, but I can’t recall their names right now. During dinner, we had a violinist and accordion player serenading people during dinner. I poo-pooed the idea at first, but everyone loved them. The violinist also played in a trio during the ceremony, which was fab.

London and knitting photos to come. I was in MA last weekend, visiting the old stomping grounds (but not Webs - they were closed on Monday, boo!). My flight from Dallas to IAH was super delayed, so I grabbed a standby ticket to Hobby. However, my checked bag still flew to IAH, and my camera is in it. We will be reunited on Thursday, when I drop Rob off to the airport…

Craftster fabulousness:

• Intarsia liquor bottle. I wonder if Rob would appreciate an intarsia-ed Laphroiag bottle?
• Leaf Sweater - a leafy cable gives some interest to a basic, summery, top-down raglan. I like.

A macro shot of the unblocked mess that is Green Gable. I started this on the flight to London, because I needed a somewhat mindless knit for the looong flight (although a direct flight from Houston - bonus!). Somewhat mindless means that it’s easy to not pay attention and completely forget little things like raglan increases and pattern rows when you’re half asleep watching Walk the Line. Even worse is actually falling asleep watching the movie, which loops over and over again, and I spent the first half of the trip with Johnny Cash songs running through my brain. Regardless, the sweater is super cute so far. I’ll probably put it aside to finish poor Not-Orangina, which is knit to the waist and half-seamed up.

I’m knitting Blue Gable using Knitpicks Shine sport. First, the good: The yarn is incredibly soft and works up very nicely. Very, very soft. Not something you would use for crisp stitch definition, but it does the job for this sweater. Also, it is damn cheap.

The bad: I have found messy breaks in the yarn in four out of seven balls that I’ve rewound so far. WTF? I know it’s cheap, but this is just crap production of the yarn. Really crap. Every time I find a loose bit, I swear Knitpicks’ name. !@#$! Also, the yarn is put up on the most loosely-balled balls that it falls apart by just looking at it, hence the rewinding. The balls below are survivors after the surgery - one of the little guys is 10 grams, the other 5 grams.

London was fun! Sights were seen, food was eaten, beer was imbibed. I could definitely see myself living in London - being there makes me yearn for a city with a good subway system. More photos to come, once I return to Central time.

A bit of knitting occurred on those 9 hour flights, even though there was some sneakiness involved with getting the needles on board. We flew British Airways, and it seems that they don’t want needles on the flights. On the way there it wasn’t much of an issue, but there were lots of signs explicitly saying that needles were sharp and dangerous in Gatwick. A Green Gable (well, blue in this case) was started on the way there, and a badly pooling sock was knit on the way back…

We’re travelling next week to London - yay! A newly-cast-on Green Gable will be going with me, hopefully my metal needles won’t be confiscated. My damn cheapo Webs bamboo circulars are so NOT 3.75mm, despite what they say on the needle. Lots of photos to come when we return in a week…

In the meantime, some linkage:

• One last Sockpaloooza bit - the Pomatomi went off to Kansas, for Sugar Bunny Boulevard. Go check out her yarns - she creates the most beautiful colors with Wilton Food coloring. Food coloring! Amazing.
• My friend Amy, from the central Houston Stitch and Bitch, started a new blog: Sea Anemone. She’s making a Somewhat Cowl, and having much more success than I did.

Rob and I went to Domy Books recently, and it is all kinds of greatness. I hit the robot section (a robot section!) and picked up a couple of things - a Taschen book on “Robots, Spaceships, and other Tin Toys,” and a little book of postcards by Tom Gauld. The postcards are so great, I want to hang them everywhere. I sent one to my sockpal. The photo here shows part of “Our Hero Battles Twenty-Six Alphabetical Terrors.” Click on the photo to see it a bit larger and clearer.

Cute, cute fish plates from Sprout Home, and Silver, an alphabetical terror in her own right.

Staci held a super fun yarn swap at her house last night. There were about 12 people there, and a ton of yarn. Yarn of all types, from schmancy Rowanspun Aran (which Amy snatched away at the beginning of the night), to random half-balls and scraps and acrylic flouf that went unclaimed.

The table full of yarn and some of the attendees. L-R: Kathryn, daughter of person who’s name I’ve already forgotten (sorry!), Jet, Susan, Staci, Amy, Mo.

I brought 2lbs of bright cotton yarn with me. Amy graciously took the beast of a skein and proceeded to wind it late in the evening (with help from Staci and Jet). First the swift leapt off the table, then the ball leapt off of the winder. The yarn gave a collective middle finger to us all. On the right - Julia and Staci’s matching knitting tattoos!

My haul from the swap. The highlights are some Colinette Skye (which I plan on getting more of when we go to London in a couple of weeks) and a bunch of handpaintedyarn.com laceweight. Click on the photo for the flickr page, which has details of what’s what in the photo.

More photos from the swap are here.

I got my Sockpaloooza socks! My wonderful sockpal, blogless Polly, has sent me some rocking socks! They are from the Fiber Trends Mount Hood pattern, and the yarn is Lorna’s Laces. Lorna’s Laces is soft like butter. Yum!

Lovely Polly also sent me chocolate from Chicago. When the package arrived, the bars were not solid in any way. Welcome to Texas, chocolate. However, some time in the fridge firmed them up nicely, and I cracked the one on the right open (coconut, yum). So yummies all around with these. Thanks Polly!

The squarey on the left is now living in Astoria, and goes by Frankie. He’s a bit on the rectangular side, but he’s cool with that. He’s made of some Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride and Classic Elite Maya.

The squarey on the right matches a toile couch in South Carolina. He’s a bit different from the first - I provisionally casted on for his top edges, and kitchenered his halves together. This worked out much better than the first squarey - the first guy had a bit of an indentation at the top and bottom where I fake-grafted the halves together. He is made of Knitpicks Wool of the Andes.

Both are from Jess Hutch’s booklet, which is chock full of extremely cute things. I absolutely loved the face that she embroidered on her squareys, so mine look pretty much the same. When I first bought the booklet, I thought I would do nothing but make an army of small stuffed creatures, but that wore off pretty quickly…