Wedding Fodder...

or..."The Dress, The Hair, The Ring, and The Man"

Old friends ask me, "When are you getting married?"  It's become so old hat to reply, "When I'm done with school." that I don't really think about something two years+ away.  Until I found these pictures, courtesy of Tumblr, and began dreaming.

The ring is a family heirloom from his side.  It was custom designed by Great grandfather and has been handed down from father to son for four generations now.  When the couple reaches their 25th wedding anniversary the ring is tucked away (in the original box!), to await the romance of the next generation, and a new ring procured.  I'm thinking something gothy?  Steampunk?  Or just plain lovely.

My grand scheme is to make my dress, probably as a senior project for school, and go from there.  I have struggled with what silhouette I want and then I found this fun purple (made from a tent!) frock.

I love the neckline, not terribly keen on the sleeves, but that's okay.  I also adore the button sash.  I'm such a sucker for button details...

Then I stumbled on this photograph and fell madly in love with the hair idea.  By the time I actually get hitched my hair is going to be so long.  I'm thinking peonies, or something equally sumptuous.  Or just a crown of autumn leaves.  We are getting married in October after all. 

Oh, yes, the most important part.  My honey-bunny.  Couldn't do this without him!

Time Passes

A year ago tomorrow someone I barely knew suddenly left my life. A week after their Grandpa went home, so did my little Blueberry. I like to think my Grandpa went first so he could hold their hand and keep them safe for me, and the thought makes me smile despite the sadness.

Today I knit another piece for Project Hope, in hopes of the future and all that will await me.

The Hope Project

I haven't written about this idea before, so don't worry if it suddenly sounds new to you. :) It's been percolating in the back of my mind and on my heart a lot lately. Since I spend the bulk of my time alone all day, there is a lot of time to think, and sometimes that thinking isn't terribly productive. It's often revealing of what's on my heart though, and this is how Project Hope was born.

Last October I lost my first baby and it was traumatic, horrible, and scary. I have hoped for so very very long to finally have a child, and here I was, loosing that which I desired above all else. I did what any self-respecting student of Elizabeth Zimmerman would do and knitted. I made a little tiny hat for someone who would never wear it. I wrapped it in tissue paper, stuffed it into a box and tried to forget how much it hurt. Here I am, ten months and twenty days later, still knitting. I am drawn to baby projects, I admit it. I want to knit tiny baby things to soothe myself. At first I considered this idea idiotic, why knit baby things for a baby you don't have? What not knit baby things for other people's babies? I do sometimes, but it's always with the knowledge that I still don't have one. My baby hat is still empty, my heart still has a baby shaped hole in it, waiting for that beautiful day when I can finally hold my child in my arms.

Then I caved. I made booties. Tiny, perfect, little baby booties for feet that aren't here yet. These languished for a while on my crafting table waiting for a time when I'd finally put buttons on them. Yesterday I did just that. I tucked away all the little yarny ends, I sewed buttons on them, I took the obligatory knitting-blog photos and something in my heart changed. Project Hope was born. I don't want to be bitter (It'll never happen), or scared (What if I loose another one?), I want to knit on with confidence and hope, through all crises, until I reach the day where I can pull out the bonnet and put it over a little head, until the day when I can tuck tiny baby toes into handmade booties. I want to hope for that day, and in so wanting, I allowed myself to knit. I permit myself to knit things for my babies to come because it's theraputic for my soul. Other things for other babies will be made, but there will also be extra special things just for my babies, to be tucked away in the box labeled Hope.

A box, labeled Hope.

Indulge me in a moment of reflection and sorrow.

I don't know why it's on my mind so much, but I look at friends, blogs, women who are going to have their first baby and all I can do it miss the one that I lost. Perhaps it hasn't been long enough for the emotion to ebb fully, not that it ever really should, but you know what I mean. To recede to the point where I can be happy for the other women and not feel that little nagging voice that says, "You almost had this." As if I never will?
That is not the case, I counter. I will have children, just not now. Not anytime soon. I want to finish college, and find a stable job in theatre, or teaching theatre and then, when I have the means and the peace of mind, then I can try again. I can try at all.

For now I tell myself that I can't and all it does is make me sad. It makes me worried. I pray for peace, I beg God to make it go away - the wanting so very, very badly - make it go away until I have the time in my life. I can't afford to want a sweet baby right now. It's not an option. It just doesn't stop the wanting inside. So I knit, I keep my life busy in a good way, I spend oodles of time with my honey. And wait. With deep breaths, with patience, with love, I wait. I send prayers up to Heaven to the little one that almost was, telling them I loved them while they were here, and the family that has gone ahead of me will love them until I am there.

*sigh*

And now back to your irregularly scheduled knitting and theatre drivel. Thanks.

~A

Pure Squee. . .

My apologies for the poor lighting, but I'm just too chuffed to really care. He proposed. It was the cutest proposal in the history of cute proposals, and of course I said yes.

I'm also still pinching myself. I can't quite believe it, and then a glance down at my left hand and start grinning like an idiot.

In the meantime, there are Christmas gifts to finish knitting, Thanksgiving to prepare for, and many many things to be thankful for.

Cheers dear friends!

Have Sleeves...

...Sweater to Follow?
It seems I have a wee problem.











I have begun two sleeves with only enough yarn to complete ONE SLEEVE! Gah. How silly it that? It's quite silly in terms of knitting but as my budget is severly limited to enough for two skeins of Noro, it's understandable. So my sleeves sit in a knitting bag, on my work table, tempting me with their loveliness and promise of cozy warmth in which I might wrap myself up in come their completion.

A novelty and reflections on a life misplaced

First off, my new gnome lights. Yes, I bought novelty lights in the shape of little gnomes. Now my family is saying I love and collect gnomes. Let me set you straight, not really, but it's slowly turning into a minor fetish.




Yesterday I spent most of the day at my grandparents house in West Seattle. My mother's childhood home and the place of many of my childhood memories. I love my mum's room with it's french doors leading out on a little closed balcony. I love the lion's head down in the garden below. His name is Aslan, naturally.





Now it's just my grandpa living in this big house, and it feels kinda lonely without my grandma there. She's still living, but she's at an Adult Family Home where they can take good care of her with her dementia. There's bits and pieces of her still around my grandpa's home. Her perfume, make-up, clothing, jewellery and I often find myself looking through them wondering what she was like as a young girl, mother. She wasn't a milk and cookies grandma, she was strict and hard on my brothers and me. For all that, we respected her as she was and still is our grandma. I just don't know much about her, from her in her own words. On the flip-side of this is my own family who has raised me with tales of my family history. I know what my parents were like a kids, and teen-agers, adults. All the parts I wasn't present for, I've experienced through their words and stories. So I wonder, looking at my grandma's things, what was her life like before I met her? I wish I could know, I wish she could have told me. Taught me how to sew without a pattern, cook by instinct. With each thing I discover about her, I want to learn more only now she barely remembers herself. It's a sad thing, and I pray that some day I might learn more about her so I can tell her story for her, to my children, and they can tell their children in turn.

It feels like I'm never going to college

It seems to me that I will never get to college before I'm 30? 25? Something like that. It's this, un-attainable dream that is quickly becoming shredded into limp, pale, wan tatters that tremble lifelessly in the cold wind of my mind. They were once vibrant- Maybe they've never been vibrant?
I've always known my parents wouldn't give me any assistance for my college education. They just can't. There's no fund saved up, there's no tiny thousand dollars stashed away for me and my college. It's just me. And my penny jar-which is empty, by the way-to forge the path to higher education.
I want it, however badly, it seems I don't want it badly enough to get a crappy job that pays jack-squat, save it all up, pursue a million scholarships and grants and put myself through. On my own. It just seems to, stupid? I must be too old? There's something there that hinders me. Something that binds me back into my cell-which I built myself- and locks me securely in.
I am twenty two. I feel too old to go to college. I feel to old to do anything teenagers are supposed to do after high school. Namely, go to college. You start at eighteen, finish at, twenty-one or twenty two. I should be done with college. I should be doing some crappy job that has nothing to do with what I studied and have a fucking college education. Yet, would I be happy then? Would the fact that I have a piece of paper that attests to my gain of a higher education make me happy?
I would be considered normal. I've never been considered normal. Perhaps that is what, beneath layers of human emotion and past, I truly want. To fit into the vast expanse of humanity and be another human. Not forever, but just for a little while. To be normal.
What is normal? The norm? It's going to school, to get a good education to get a job that will, in the end, kill you. That's normal. It's being tall and skinny with no glasses, perfect teeth, superficial friends, parents that have college savings for you, give you your first car, and straight blonde or brown hair. That's normal.
And it goes against everything that I am.
I am not normal, and for some strange reason, I cannot fully live with that. There's something-a lack of recognition-that leaves me uneasy in my day to day life. I have curly hair, glasses, I'm not particularly tall, in fact, I might be called short. I'm strong, a little stocky, and I have a passion for art. I'm not model gorgeous, but I'm not, by any means ugly. I'm pretty. A certain kind of pretty for a certain kind of guy that I will meet someday before I'm old and decrepit.
And because of this ab-normality. This lack of normality, normal-ness, I'm torn, destroyed, shredded, and believe I will never go to college.
My one priority now is to, (in these steps) get a job, to pay for car insurance, to get my driver's license, to get an apartment away from my house. To live on my own. Doing what? I don't know yet. This is another fantasy that is being slaughtered by reality. In the fantasy there's a cosy urban apartment (think Across The Universe) where I can paint the walls and have a cat. I work in the morning at a coffee shop. I have a fabulous rapport with the regulars, perhaps a couple of tattoos, purple hair, and a funky wardrobe. Then I go home for late lunch, maybe do a little crafting to support my Etsy business, and then it's off to the theatre for rehearsal, performance, artsy ness. That's my fantasy. Oh yeah, and I have a black ( or gunmetal grey) Volkswagen Golf that I drive around in. Maybe with the cat, whose name is Bunky. The black cat. That' giant one who looks a little fearsome as he soaks up the afternoon sunlight on the windowsill? That's Cicero. Or Lord Byron. Or maybe even Chaucer, but he'd have to be quite remarkable.
That's my dream. And here I shall leave it, for I can't bear to dip back into reality right now, the dream is too lovely, too sunny where reality is not. I'm going to soak up the sun. Just for little while.