The pig wot got married - wedding shawl

I was going to post about this at a point when it fitted into the story of our wedding day as told on my other blog, but a couple of people asked and I can't resist showing off. Here is my wedding shawl, in one of my favourite photos from our wedding day, taken on the portico of the Fitzwilliam Museum.



The pattern is Aeolian by Elizabeth Freeman, which seems to be a popular patten for wedding shawls, judging by Ravelry.

The yarn is a 4 ply silk I bought several years ago from Fyberspates. It's gorgeously soft and shiny, blocks beautifully and was the perfect colour to complement my ivory dress, purple shoes and purple and pink flowers. I didn't have quite enough to cast off, as the pattern uses a double strand, so I went stash-diving again and came up with a small quantity of aran silk from HipKnits, left over from this scarf. The weight of the aran is a little heavier than 2 strands of 4ply, but not much. The colours are similar to the body of the shawl, but darker, giving an extra pop of colour to the wavy edge.



In this photo (ignore my windswept hair and veil), you can see the beads better. They're creamy pearly beads, size 6, I think. Looks like I neglected to record where exactly I bought them. This was my first time knitting with beads and it wasn't as hard as I'd feared. I don't think I'd like to tackle the sort of project where you have to start by threading all your beads onto your yarn, but placing each one on the right stitch with a thin crochet hook was not too fiddly and very satisfying.

I'm very very pleased with the result. The shawl actually didn't get much wear on the day. I didn't put it on until after the group photos when we went off on our own for some more pictures and, once we got to the reception, I didn't need it for warmth. But it will always be my wedding shawl and when I wear it again (which I will, unlike the dress) I'll remember our wedding day and smile.

Photos by Dave Routledge.

too tired to KIP

It's World Wide Knit in Public day. Well, strictly speaking it's the beginning of the WWKIP season, which runs from 12th to 20th June. I planned to join my fellow Cambridge KToggers on Parkers Piece at 1pm this afternoon. But I was so tired, I slept most of the morning and didn't get dressed until 2pm. So I shall be KIP-ing at some other time and place this week, probably whenever I think of it.

Where are you KIP-ing?

well, that's one way to de-stash

Ever since the weather got warmer, we've been finding moths around our flat. They're little brown ones which look like scraps of brown paper. When I was away last weekend, Rob went on a determined hunt and killed all the moths he could find. For a few days, we were moth-free, but I knew it wouldn't last. They must be breeding in the flat somewhere. Killing off all the adults we could find wasn't getting to the source of the problem.

Today I found it. I was searching for an elusive 3.5mm circular needle to swatch with. I wasn't having much luck, so I took all my wool bags and baskets off the top shelf and started to rootle them. Imagine my horror on finding my baskets of oddments full of little grey-ish specks and papery cocoons. I squished one of the cocoons and found it full of sliminess - a definitely active clothes moth larva. :( Many of my odd balls were full of cocoons and eggs and some were chewed into short lengths.

Three wicker baskets full of oddments have now gone straight off to the bins (which are outside and a distance from the building). I've had a look through the other bags of wool that were up there and they look ok, but I don't think I want to risk it. I've put some precious whole skeins in the freezer (including my gorgeous honeymoon yarn), but I suspect that I shall just ditch much of the rest. It's mostly oddments, odd balls and partial skeins, although there's a large-ish amount of Rowan 4ply soft I'm hoping to make into a short sleeved jumper that I don't want to bin.

Fortunately, my stash isn't enormous. I've got maybe half a dozen balls/skeins of sock wool, my honeymoon laceweight, the Rowan, a couple of things I've got 4 or 5 balls of (left over from jumpers) and then oddments, which I doubt I''ll miss. I hope this will teach me to keep my stash small, and to keep it in sealed plastic bags, not open wicker baskets.

Next, a grand search of the rest of the flat. Starting with the laundry basket which has several dirty woollen items which have been waiting a while to be washed. I fear the worst. :S

The pig wot got married - bridesmaids

I'm posting about my wedding on my other blog. I thought I'd post here about the things I made and bought in terms of clothes and decorations. Let's start with my lovely bridesmaids.



Here's Liz, in red, with Hannah (pink) and Debs (purple) just about visible behind her. They're all wearing the same dress, which is by Teatro and no longer seems to be online anywhere. All their dresses were bought on eBay. I wanted my bridesmaids to be dressed similarly, but not the same. I liked the idea of having many shades of pink, red and purple as my colour scheme. I didn't want to be stressing about finding exact colour matches for everything. If it was pink, red or purple, it was great! Having said that, within the BMs' outfits, there was a bit of colour matching to do, although some of it came about serendipitously.



The fascinators were the first thing I matched. I love fascinators, they're so much fun to wear. These ones came from Debenhams in the January sales. I think I paid full price for one, but the others were marked down by about 70%. They're all different and all (except the purple one) match the dresses perfectly.

The girls wore their own necklaces and shoes. The only stipulation I made about shoes was that Liz (who is shorter than me) could wear heels but Debs and Hannah couldn't. :) Debs wore some purple flats she already owned and Liz found some bargainous red LK Bennett heels for £5 in a charity shop.

The last thing I realised was that I needed to keep my bridesmaids warm. As I was knitting myself a shawl, I liked the idea of all of us wearing Bekki-knitted wraps or shawls, but I didn't really have the time to knit three more. A rummage through my wardrode produced two Clapotis - one in purple which perfectly matched Debs' dress and a second in purple and pink, which while not a perfect match, went well with Hannah's pink. The solution was obvious - knit a third Clapotis in red for Liz.

In the end, I don't think they wore them very much. These seem to be the only photographs in which all three bridesmaids are wearing their wraps. But it was pleasing to have us all wearing eBay-ed dresses and hand-knitted shawls.