I have a habit of disappearing. I’m no Houdini, I promise you that. I might exist on a social media blitz high – posting on my Facebook group, Ravelry, Twitter, yada –  for a couple weeks and then disappear for awhile. That’s the nature of my existence, for now anyways, due by in large to the multitude of constraints hoisted upon me.

Yes, even while I’ve been on a 2-month staycation from the Day Job – let’s not mention that too much since I’m 36 hours away from its demise – I’ve been busy working. I’m not one to rest on my laurels. If given 2 months off, I try to use my time wisely (sorta). I believe in a philosophy of working hard and playing hard. On this staycation, however, it’s certainly been more work than anything. Between doing stuff around the house, selling things on eBay, getting rid of stuff around the house, pumping out pattern updates, and working with clients – other self-published crochet and/or knit designers – I’ve kept myself busy. Such is the case of the later in the last several days.

KRW Knitwear

Karen Ratto-Whooley contacted me nearly 8 months ago about doing the graphics for her pattern line. She’s a busy mom with an equally busy schedule of teaching classes and designing for herself and other notable publications and is like most prolific designers in that she’d rather have someone else deal with the graphics-end of things while she concentrates on the designing itself.

When Karen approached me about laying out her patterns, she was doing what most designers without graphics experience or a graphics budget do: use a basic word processing program to layout her work. Yes, one can get by doing this, but there are so many limitations to those programs, nor do they ever produce something that’s as polished in presentation as one can achieve through traditional print-publication software. That’s where I come in.

Karen wanted something simple (“minimal” is what she said) in terms of layout and color palette. She had gone ahead and had a really lovely logo created by another designer. It’s a yarn ball that leads up to a butterfly which represents her “Nonna.”

by Missa of KPixie

The layout needed to reflect her color choices she’d started with: brown and pink with lots of white space in the layout. She wanted a flexible layout that could work if she decided to include diagrams, schematics, and step-outs, or not. Additionally, she was hoping to cut down her page usage which for a simple pattern was eating up sometimes as much as 6 pages. And we certainly did that as the longest pattern of hers is only 2 pages (one sheet of paper back to back)! Now Karen is saving lots of money in up-front printing costs, enabling her to put that money back into the “profit” column without compromising the integrity of her patterns.

With a lot of back-and-forth, Karen and I, in a host of synergistic email conversations, came up with a layout design that we both love. It’s fun, airy, and flexible, simple without being understated. The important pre-pattern information – yarn, hook, notions, etc) are all in neatly organized brown framed bubbles on the side of each main product shot. The romance text – that name makes me chuckle because I instantly think of the word SWOON – is in a prominent, brown colored box near the top as well as the name of the pattern, which makes it easy for LYS’s with a lot of patterns to locate quickly. And the pattern text flows seamlessly from there on down.

Front pages of several KRW Knitwear patterns

The layout also translates well to her catalog, which she also had me do over too. The catalog is designed for 11×17 format so the back and front cover are on the same side with the two inside pages next to one another. On the bottom of the two inside pages is a series of descriptions about the features of KRW patterns as well as pointing out that Karen teaches classes and is going to be selling some kits for her patterns in January 2011.

Back and Front Cover

Two Inside Pages

There’s nothing more exciting than a make-over!

The birthday festivities are rather prolonged in this family because so many people have birthdays near one another. In August there are three, so we wind up having joint parties. This tends to carry out my birthday through the month. We just had the birthday round-up this past weekend.

And I now have a matching ball winder to go with my new yarn swift!

My life is now complete. Kinda. I still need to win the lottery and quit the Day Job. A girl can dream, can’t she?

I’ve yet to wind anything with it as I just got it, but I’m hoping to sometime this week. I have several hanks that need winding.

I rounded off the birthday festivities with some homemade bananas foster iced cream.

You know you want some.

Yum. Really, YUMMMM. You are SO jealous. You know you are. It takes just like bananas foster, right down to the cinnamon and rum (extra rum please). The best part is how easy it is to make.

And as usual, kitty is taking these festivities lying down.

Akshewully, dis iz haw I dew my behst mehditayting

She doesn’t go bonkers for bananas. No, she doesn’t. She might get a kick out of the ball wonder though. I just hope her fur doesn’t.

It’s crazy to think a year has gone by since I got married. A year ago on this nearly 90 degree day, I was running around like crazy taking care of all the last minute details of our do-it-yourself wedding, right down to the flowers with live succulents, the booze, the invites, the music, the wedding fans: you name it, we probably made it ourselves. Between my husband and I, we have enough of a skill set to host any kind of party. Oh, and the crochet. There was crochet! “Crocheted Gifts” by Kim P Werker had just come out and I saw Annie Modesitt’s, “Trinity Lace Shrug” and loved it. It was a week before the wedding and I had no time to think of engineering a garment on my own considering all that I was already doing. I bought the book and set out to make the garment within days of the wedding (cutting it close, eh?)

What you can't see are my buckling knees, no lie! 6" yellow heels will do that to a gal.

Our wedding was the anti-wedding and I was the anti-bride. Neither of us are completely into formalities. We didn’t want anything fussy since we’re not fussy people. We like to have fun and hang with our friends and that’s what our wedding was set out to be: a party to celebrate 10 years together. That doesn’t mean we boozed it up making our way down the aisle! We did have our fair share of laughs though. The ceremony was both very touching and quite humorous at the same time. Our wedding “celebrant,” Dana did a fantastic job delivering the opening remarks. There was a lot of poking and at times it felt like a roast (in a good way).

No booze was ingested during the making of this photograph. I swear.

We had a simple ceremony that lasted 15 minutes. I wrote the reading which left very few dry eyes in the small group of 50 family and friends; I am a soothsayer with the words when I need to be. We also wrote our own vows. I don’t know how I got through that ceremony without crying.

Someone yelled, "IT'S ABOUT FREAKIN' TIME!" right after we were pronounced husband and wife. Love, Love, Love!

But I did. It was an emotional day made extra emotional by the recent passing of my step-father just a few months earlier. His passing was the impetus to move forward and get married after a 5 year engagement (no, your eyes aren’t deceiving you on that number). We received so many compliments on the wedding. Many said it was hands down the best wedding they had ever been to.

Our reception was a party. No fussy sit-down meal. Incredible food served buffet style. All organics! Friends made up the band and switched out during different sets so the music was always pumping. We skipped the wedding cake – we both HATE cake, yuck – and opted for Bailey’s vanilla ice cream in a chocolate bowl with a chocolate dipped spoon. SUPER YUM.

A sweet ending to a sweet day.

Green.

Something about the color green triggers certain memories for me. Actually, colors in general do that for me. It’s how my brain is wired: a crazy juxtaposition of spoken words –  both from pop culture and my own experiences – and colors along with a heavy helping of loaded feelings. That’s how I remember things. I rarely can re-tell a story and give the play-by-play of it all, rather choosing to regurgitate it in a non-sequential order in the manner in which it was coded into my brain.

Think of my memory being like a long rope. Tied to the rope are smaller ropes that jut off in different directions, each coded with a piece of memory in no certain order. I can reach down and pick up the rope at any give point, tapping into just a part of something but not really knowing why it’s been placed there and if I’ll ever revisit it again.

Sometimes I can remember where I was standing or what I was wearing or doing when someone or something triggers that memory for me, never really recalling exactly what was said line-by-line, but rather how it made me feel and the general gist of the scenario. I’m not a gal of facts and history. I’d flunk at Jeopardy. Just sayin’.

So there I was two weeks ago trying to put together an idea of a pattern. I pulled out 7 skeins of “Luna” by Elann, a rich green color that I really loved.

Cypress Shimmer. What a great name. I quickly formed the idea to make a bag out of it because I was unsure if I had enough for a garment. It felt like a perfect Fall color. And I had a brown leather handle that would look awesome with the green.

Rewind a few days prior to this, I’d conducted a little online research about crocheters buying trends for crocheted handbag patterns. I’d quickly surmised that people might not be inclined to buy patterns that featured pre-bought handles. So I settled on coming up with something that was yarn-only and cool. But what to do?

Don't I look ridiculous trying to be serious?

I attest the rest of my inspiration for the Rhiannon Tote on subliminal messages because none of the thoughts for why I carried out this project the way I did were from my conscious memory. They were somewhere far down on that rope. In this case, you could say I started this project based on an inward motivation to do something, anything, and that I was moving towards my inspiration (Not the predictable order of things I suppose).

Braids. I had them in my head. Why? I didn’t know (at the time). I thought it would be cool to make a braided handle. It’d be sturdy. I could pad it for comfort. And it would be unique; I’d never seen a braided handle before.

Fast Forward to three days ago, I was struggling for a name for this newly created tote.

Inner dialog: “Green. GREEN!”

And then it was like weird science. I saw green. My brain spit out, “Rhiannon.” And then the lyrics came swirling in my head causing an earworm:

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
And wouldn’t you love to love her?
Takes through the sky like a bird in flight
And who will be her lover?

All your life you’ve never seen a woman
Taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you Heaven?
Will you ever win?

But why? GREEN! The cover of the Fleetwood Mac album is green.

And the braids? Rhiannon was a Welsh goddess. Celtic art is filled with knots and braiding. And why was this all on my mind? My step-father. He loved Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks. He took me to see her once when she was playing solo. It was one of the few concerts I recall going to as a child but I remembered how much he lusted over Stevie. His birthday would have been two weeks ago. He would have been 60.

Love ya Joe. Miss you lots.

I wrote a pattern this week. Yep, you heard that correctly.

I.

Wrote.

A.

Pattern.

I know, you’re wondering why did it take so long (for the record, me too). Well to be accurate, it took about a week and a half to write the thing (but that’s not really the topic, is it?). To the casual observer, I’ve seemed to have fallen off the creative map. There’s been a silent war going on inside my head for control: the Creative Have’s and the Creative Have Not’s. The Have Not’s have been winning many battles but the Have’s are trying to win the war with an all-out assault on my brain. And, it’s working. Thankfully!

I’ve acquired the help of a very special friend, who I will introduce to you shortly. She’s been an immense help in rallying the troops.

Finally. A published pattern. FINALLY.

I’ve been sitting on this pattern for a year and a half. That’s right. You aren’t seeing things. I did say A YEAR AND A HALF. Designers are known to come up with a bevy of ideas and sit on some of them, but it’s not so usual to be near the finish line and drop a project (or in my case, all designing) so suddenly. I ceased putting out new designs when I began taking on clients (other designers) for their own graphics needs. But I was finding myself spending less and less time with crochet. And truth be told, I rarely picked up a hook during my self-imposed internment.

It’s not that I didn’t want to. I did. It’s just…there were (and have been) so many other things on my plate that something had to give. The Day Job got stressful. More of the Side Work (aka. “graphics work”) was coming in. At one point, I wasn’t sure if the wedding was going to happen. And then my step-father passed away. And then there was a wedding scheduled along with all the details that were quite time consuming. I just didn’t have room for a hook in there, physically but more so mentally.

Does anyone else feel like that? Like you can’t have a fresh perspective on new designs if so many other things are crowding your brain? That’s how I felt anyway. I tend to put everyone and everything else first and me last. That’s what I was doing. In a way, I was devaluing my own self.

I have to reference something Kim Werker said a few months ago about ‘being afraid to be awesome’ (loosely paraphrased). It’s a self-imposed roadblock that I’ve chosen to dig myself out of. Starting today.

So now that some of those things have been resolved, I’ve chosen to get back on my metaphysical “horse” and pump out some new designs, do something for mefor a change.

Here are some more details about the wedding…which is in 4 days!

Techno-Wedding Cards & Bouquet Extras:

Larry came up with the FABULOUS idea of having our guests be able to automatically upload pictures they take at our wedding using their cameras and phone cameras. Once someone takes pictures, they just send them to a prescribed email address and they’re posted automatically in an online image gallery for everyone to see, share, print, download, whatever. The gallery is already set up so if people want to snap and upload on wedding day, it’s ready to go. Yeah, we’re a bunch of geeks.

The other items clumped into this image are for my bouquet. The top one is a picture of my step-father. I printed it out and cut the image to fit this silver trinket I bought at Michael’s for $3.00. The other is something I picked up last night. I’m thinking of adding some crystals at the bottom of the one that has Larry’s name on it. Both will be attached to my bouquet so my step-father will be walking me down the aisle, posthumously.

Tree of Wisdom:

This will replace the boring guest book that is sometimes signed but rarely re-visited after the wedding. Basically, guests can complete the sentence that’s posted on a sign next to the tree. Some of them say, “Marriage is like…,” “Always say….,” “For a Long, Loving Marriage…” (Here’s a link to the pdf of the sign. I printed it out and put it in a black picture frame). We’ve encouraged guests to say silly and ridiculous things! Once they’re written what they want, they’ll hang the card from the tree.

I bought these sandblasted manzanita branches from Nettlton Hollow and arranged them in a glass vase I bought at Michaels. You can see one of the placemats will go underneath it.

I crocheted a basket to hold bird and leaf cards I cut from heavy paper. I love the birdies!

I’m going to try to squeeze in another post before the wedding but no promises. I’m busy finishing up the loose ends. No really, I’m just about done with my version of the Trinity Lace Shrug from “Crocheted Gifts” by Kim P. Werker.

(If you missed Part 1, here’s a link. If you want to see where they wedding will be held or check out the color inspiration for everything, check out this post.)

While I’m a fan of the importance of the larger details of a wedding – the clothes, the wedding vendor, the food – it’s the smaller details that I feel make or break a wedding. I can think of one wedding I’ve been to where all the details were attended to that made the day feel like we were a part of something unique, something special. That’s the feel I’m going for here with the planning of this wedding. It’s important to us that it feel like an extension of who we are as people. Nothing cookie-cutter allowed.

To that end, it was important to me especially that we have our hand (and say) all over every detail and even make or put together a lot of what will be seen. Additionally – if that isn’t enough of a charge – we wanted a portion of the event to be about sustainability. I felt confident that we could use and re-use a lot of what’s put together – or even sell to some other bride/bridegroom to re-use – so that we weren’t impacting the Earth. That’s why we chose the Stone House for our event. They’re big on that sustainability factor. Hopefully we’ve been able to apply what we felt strongly about in the course of planning this event.

Here’s the nitty-gritty details in no particular order:

Cocktail Table Flowers:

Instead of using regular flowers which just wilt and die, I decided early on that I’d like to use succulents. I’ve seen them used in wedding before and they’re just gorgeous. The colors, the shapes, the uniqueness. I love it all. So I set out to plant them in glass containers I purchased at Michael’s and AC Moore. With coupons, I wound up saving a bunch of money. I bought some rocks in a large bag at Home Depot for $4.00 and used them as “soil.” The gray of the rocks goes with the color palette we set out to use. Aren’t they cool?

Fans:

I found the idea of doing wedding fans online and I liked it and thought I could make my own because they’d be way cheaper and more personalized. One of the Best Gals bought 6″ tongue depressors from a medical supply store for me. I glued two of them together to increase their length. I bought Epson Matte paper (1-sided) and designed them using the image from the invites altered to include another bird. Below the birds are the names of everyone participating in the wedding and a special “thank you” to everyone for coming. What you don’t see – stoopid me because I should have taken the pic with one front and one back view – is that on the back is the menu for the day. While people are waiting for the event to start, they can peruse the food selections!

After printing out the fronts and back separately, I carefully glued the tongue depressors to the backs of each and then glued the front on top. Lastly, I cut ribbon to a certain size and tied it around the bottom of each. Some I made gray, some green:

Cones:

Another idea I found online, these wedding flower cones will hold some of the Billy Button (crespedia) flowers I purchased on Whole Blossoms. They’ll hang from the aisle chairs in the first three rows to designate “Family Only.”

All the paper was purchased at AC Moore. The yellow paper has a gold, textured design on it which I liked. What you can’t see well enough is that the gray paper is wedding paper – it has hearts, linked wedding bands, and the words, “I will marry my friend,” “2 become 1,” and “The one I Love, Live for, Laugh with Forever and Ever” all over it. I bought a $2.00 pair of fancy edging scissors from Walmart and trimmed two sides of the yellow paper, which was cut at 81/2″. The gray paper was cut for 8″. I glued two sides of the paper down on the inside and rolled the cone and adhered the open edge with hot glue. Cut some holes in the front and back with a hole punched, weave in a long ribbon, and done!

I love these little Billy Button flowers!

More to come. There’s just too much to fit into one post!

]]> http://www.nexstitch.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=367 0 http://www.nexstitch.com/blog/?p=342 http://www.nexstitch.com/blog/?p=342#comments Mon, 03 Aug 2009 06:31:17 +0000 Amie http://www.nexstitch.com/blog/?p=342

Sorry to leave you “flat” as we used to say when I was 10 years old. I’ve been so busy with wedding plans that I haven’t had time to pop in here and write. But let me catch you up on all things wedding (with some crochet too!).

I decided early on that I was going to be the “anti-bride,” as I was calling it, meaning I wasn’t interested in doing anything that’s typically done at weddings. Not to offend anyone, just that all of that stuff is not in my taste (nor Mr. NexStitch’s). Even our 4 1/2 year long engagement isn’t typical! Neither of us wanted a chicken dance, bouquet throwing, cake cutting, tuxedo wearing, garter belt getting via teeth kind of wedding. No way Jose’. My intention was to put on the “anti wedding,” to show everyone that all that stuff isn’t missed when it doesn’t creep up into the  schedule of events – shoot, I don’t even want a schedule on that day! Our plan is simple: get married and have a great party with excellent food and only close friends and some family. Oh, and we want to do it on a smaller budget and load the day up with lots of DIY touches, to personalize it and save money. Tall order.

If you saw my previous post, you saw that I was going with the bright yellows and greens with a splash of gray in moderation. That’s been carried out in the attire.

First up, the “Best People” (we’re not having a best man or maid of honor). The ladies will wear jCrew Cotton Cady Sydney dresses. My friend Nancy works for jCrew and got us a discount on the dresses ($157 per dress). Both of the female “Best People” are going to rock these super cute Anne Klein Hoola Sandals in a slightly paler shade of green (on sale at Marshalls and on Amazon, so about $40 a pair):

Mr. NexStitch is going to rock the jacket and pants from this slim cut Alfani suit with a nice white shirt that has a faint white on white stripe in it, black shoes and a black belt. Total cost for his outfit: $310 including tailoring of the coat. The best guys will wear gray pants and a white shirt, no jacket, same shoes and belt. The suit was 50% off at Macy’s!:

I picked out, for myself, an off-white dress from BCBG that has a similar off-white on off-white stripe in it which is most evident at the hem. I LOVE this dress because it’s simple. No beading. No glitter. No nothing (except a sash around the waist) Dress cost: $370 including 2nd-day air shipping:

For shoes I picked out a rockin’ pair of high, high heels by Carlos Santana. They’re faux crocodile, baby and only $80!:

And just today, as I was doing my tour of the Internets, I came across a new design from Annie Modesitt in the new book called, “Crocheted Gifts” by Kim P. Werker. The design is called, “Trinity Lacy Shrug” which I immediately fell in love with. I had planned to design my own shrug to wear on wedding day but with all these other details I’m taking care of, I just feared not having time to put together something I liked. This was the evident solution. I’ve decided on using Bouton d’Or’s Surya yarn in Soleil (yellow) to match the shoes ($18 a skein for 3 skeins plus the cost of the book = $85:

Details I’m still deciding on: jewelry and handbag. I’ve picked out a handbag I like but it’s $95. Not sure if I want to spend that much now, although I love the bag and would use it otherwise:

The last detail is the jewelry. My mother would like me to wear something of hers but I want to wear a green beaded necklace (not yet determined). We’ll see how that goes.

Next blog post? More details related to the wedding space (and more crochet to follow!). Stay tuned.

Following on the heels of my big announcement, I’ve sent out all but 2 invites so I guess it’s safe to share what they look like. I started out by going online to see what’s going on in the world of weddings these day. Green Wedding Shoes provided endless inspiration for real weddings, some of which are very non-conventional, which I love. I had my eye set on a bright yellow as being one of the colors but I was unsure what to pair it with. I wanted to keep it modern and playful since the venue is modern. And the location for the wedding ceremony will have a lower-intensity yellow in the background:

We’re using their Pre-Function room for the cocktail hour and reception afterwards. This room also has touches of the same yellow and a darker grey for the carpet on the slightly higher level. The first two shots are in the waiting area outside of this room and the last shot is the actual space we’ll be in:

As awesome as this space is, it’s been challenging to think about what to add to it to make it feel like a party. At the moment, I think perhaps some flowers and the people. Really, it’s an awesome space that speaks for itself.

Now about the invites…

So I wound up going to Michael’s and picking out some ribbon that I liked. The initial plan was to have the theme colors be yellow and green OR yellow and gray. Through the process, I decided that all three would work since one is a neutral (I apologize for these pictures in advance as they’re just quick snapshots from my iPhone):

From there, I devised the idea that I wanted there to be cute birds on the invites. I had found a pattern on iStockPhoto a longggg time ago that I adored and wound up coming across again. I used the bird and flower from that, tweaking it a bit. Keep in mind I had a week from conception to mailing to get these out the door. Normally, I’d just create my own illustrations from scratch, but time was of the essence! I decided pretty early on that I wanted it to be like a flip book. Here’s what I came up with:

Of course I took that one before I trimmed the bow…

For the map, I took a screen capture of two maps, one broad and one local. I brought them into Adobe Illustrator and created my inspired map on top of the originals. For the road signs, I Googled sign images and then did the same as I did for the maps. The roads I drew by hand.

The beauty about the way I designed these cards is that there was enough room to make the “thank you” cards fit on the same page, so my cards are all ready to go! You can see a shot of those on the right side of this picture:

Now, onto the wedding fan programs.