Wedding Stationary: Part II

Dan gave me 'The Owl Service' by Alan Garner for my birthday in 2011. The story is about a girl named Ali who becomes possessed by a mad owl/flower/women spirit. It's a sixties folk horror classic about... well I'm not sure what it's about to be honest, but we loved it. The Owl Service became the nexus for planning our wedding.

Part of the reason we wanted to send out real invitations (apart from the fact we just like them) was to get people excited and give them an idea of what they might expect. The invitations went out as a little packet in brown paper envelopes - I think we both had in mind those Don't Panic envelopes we used to pick up on nights out as students, which were always full of intriguing bits of paper and card. Our packet included the invite itself, the RSVP card to post back and a mysterious line drawing of a decorated plate printed on tracing paper (the owl service itself).

If I've piqued anyone's curiosity, both the book and the original bonkers/unsettling TV series are available. I also just discovered this amazing knitting pattern whilst hunting for my original sources - I know I'll be casting that on as soon as is humanly possible. The folk band aren't bad either!

scan of the original water colour I made for the invite

the finished invitation

original water colour and ink Owl illustration based on The Owl Service

the finished RSVP postcard

The Owl Service plate from Griselda Greaves's drawings

Wedding Stationary: Part I

With the insane tangle of life changing events that 2011 will always be remembered for in our house, planning our wedding was usually the bottom of the heap on the never-ending-list-of-things-to-do (a bit like The Never Ending Story but more stressful and without the cool flying dragons and 80s wardrobe). Probably it was a good thing - it kept the wedding monster inside me in perspective - and meant the process was a happy distraction most of the time. 

However little the time and money there seemed to be, we still wanted to create a handmade moment to start our new lives. It started with "The stationary". I was morally against paying anyone to do it for us. This, if anything, was the moment my creatively obsessed kid-self had been waiting for her entire life. The invitations meant more to me than the dress - I knew I had no hope of making my own dress on any kind of meaningful time scale.

It started with a save the date card. A sketch of our two cats hiding in leaves. In between sending the cards to the printer and their arrival on our doorstop ready to post, we lost cat number one. A horrid tweak of fate that got repeated later in the year. I try not to dwell on that too much in case I jinxed both our kitties by drawing them.

leaves on the line

the leaves fell

and old biochem text books came in useful for pressing a few

before they were strung along an orange ribbon to decorate the chimney breast

the snowflake lanterns are out (Dan's request - not my fault for once) as the're too pretty for only two weeks a year.

work in progress

  started this rippled crochet afghan a little while ago, but these are the first photos I've bothered to take of it. It's only old stash yarn I'm trying to get rid of, but I'm hoping to make the colours snap non-the-less. I picked it up again this week after a period of hibernation under the coffee table, not sure why.

The Owl and the Pussy Cat

've been in a bit of a funk lately. I blame writing my thesis and spilling wine on my laptop, amongst other things. Fortunately my laptop recovered (almost unbelievably) and even more fortunately I didn't loose any data (hurrah!) - so I'm gradually cheering up a bit. In the mean time it was Valentines Day, and now the event is over I can put up some pics of the Valentine I made for Dan. I was keen to make sure I equalled last years effort - which I was pretty chuffed with - and I think I managed it.

I

he Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea     In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money,     Wrapped up in a five pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above,     And sang to a small guitar, 'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,       What a beautiful Pussy you are,           You are,           You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

II

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!     How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried:     But what shall we do for a ring?' They sailed away, for a year and a day,     To the land where the Bong-tree grows And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood     With a ring at the end of his nose,           His nose,           His nose, With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling     Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.' So they took it away, and were married next day     By the Turkey who lives on the hill. They dined on mince, and slices of quince,     Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,     They danced by the light of the moon,           The moon,           The moon, They danced by the light of the moon.

Edward Lear

I got a bit carried away with my flax before I realised the boat should be green, but never mind. I could see myself making a whole set of these - One for each verse.

I did say almost

  wanted to put the Christmas cards I made this year into my online scrapbook. I bought matt brown card blanks with envelopes from paperchase, then made a six pointed star template of holes to get the snowflake shape when embroidered with crochet cotton. I was quite pleased with the effect.

hile digging out the photo I found this snap of an early Christmas present to myself. The stitch patterns are genuinely intriguing and I'm excited about having a bash. Need to pack off a few more FOs first though.

Definitely almost the last post about Christmas

hristmas duties have been dragging on a little late this year, owing to one half of dans entire family going on a four week cruise over the period. Last weekend was the first time to see them since they got back , and the first opportunity to pass on their Christmas gifts. (I admit that if we were hyper organised we'd have had everything ready to give them before they left - but seriously, we'd barely even imagined Christmas was on the horizon that first weekend of December, never mind shopping for it!).

owever, this did present me with the ideal opportunity to snap the christmas wrapping for this year - because the pre-christmas wrapping was too close to the events to actually have time to think about that kind of thing. I'm obsessive about wrapping presents and it gets worse every year. This year saw the arrival of double sided tape (because selotape is ugly) and decorative pom poms.

nd now I get the chance to store a few links for my favourite homemade wrapping decorations for future use:
- A super quick pom pom tutorial (I kept mine loose and shaggy rather than trimmed)
- Quick paper flowers (easy even without the pro-scissors)
- German paper stars (which I stuck on all the gifts the year before)
- I made the labels up in Adobe illustrator using a tag template I'd made previously and some random eps images of russian ornamental designs I downloaded a while ago.

he presents included a second scarflet for Dan's mum (which I think she appreciated), and I'm now cranking out the third for myself. I really recommend this pattern. Although if your making a choice on yarn, my vote goes for Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran (red) rather than Rowan RYC Cashsoft Aran (purple). Not that I ever would have thought it possible, but the extra 2% cashmere in the Debbie Bliss seems to make a difference. It's less shiny looking and seems to have a better haze and touch. It also holds it's ply better when being worked making the stitching look neater (to me at least).

A Wedding Cloche

I have a very important wedding to attend in December, and my mind is turning over what to wear. It's winter, it will be cold outside at least. The dress I really want to wear is kind of white though, albeit with a black print and touches of royal blue. To tone this down I was hoping to create a few accessories in tones of dark blue. In particular, Anna socks (rav link) in the marine shade of 4 ply soft; some slightly more delicate wrist warmers/fingerless mits than the ones I wore to my brother wedding (which I love, but are a little loud, below); an undecided scarf/shawl/shawlette (possibly ishbel (another rav link); but perhaps most importantly, a hat. A cloche to be specific. And having trawled Ravelry and even the internet to find a pattern, I cannot come across one that meets my requirements - which means I'm going to have to design one (eek!).

I mean, this needs to be a HAT. A proper wedding hat. Two reasons: a, my family has a strong hat wearing tradition at weddings and I don't want to let the side down; b, this is a special friends wedding in a beautiful location and I want to make sure I live up to the moment. I realise I'll probably end up wearing said hat for about 5 minutes before I get too hot inside, even in Decemeber, but I want to have it!

So, requirements (the client brief as it were):
1. Knitted, felted cloche - dark blue, marine/royal blue
2. Not to thick on the felting side, but dense enough to have good structure
3. Asymmetrical, with pleats and I like the idea of some ridges on the 'bell' too. Quite low over the brow, and cutting down close to my shoulder on one side.

Points of inspiration -
The Miss Fox cloche in the V&A exhibiton
The cloche's in lizarietz's etsy shop
And this purple vintage number

First things first, I ned to find the wool and swatch the hell out of it. To get the pleats just right I think I might need to make the bell first and add the pleats on, like the V&A hat.

Valentine

I know it's a little late but this is the valentine I made for Dan this time around