St. Edmund Campion

One of the delightful things about The Duchess & 007′s wedding was their first dance.  They’re both so silly, and they decided to share that silliness in a wonderful way.  Uncle C called them both “a couple of ham bones,” and they really are!  The result was awesome, and thanks to Crafty Minx being in the right position to capture it, I can share it with you:

If that doesn’t make you smile, I don’t know what would!

ETA: Indy has the first of the pictures from the wedding up on her blog.  Go see them – they’re lovely!

St. Paramon & Companions

On facebook AnniPotts said that the fact that we’re taking days to post about The Duchess’s wedding this past Saturday is proof that a really, really good time was genuinely had by all.  I think there’s some truth to this.  It was a beautiful wedding, a beautiful day, and a wonderful thing to see my sister joined to the man who is so utterly right for her.  The Duchess was gorgeous.  Her dress turned out beautifully.  Standing in the bright sunshine, with the breeze wafting her exquisite cathedral length veil, surrounded by her bevy of ridiculously adorable flower girls, she looked so perfect it felt like we were in the middle of a really high end perfume commercial.  It was a great and good thing.

I’m so glad it’s over.

I did get my dress done in time.  Barely.  I finished hemming it 15 minutes before the wedding was supposed to start.  Every spare moment I had between Wednesday and the wedding was spent sewing.  The dress itself came together fairly easily, which was a nice confidence builder after the ordeal of the Cursed Bridesmaid Dress.  At the last minute I panicked a little because I couldn’t find my crinoline, which is usually necessary to make these 50s style dresses look right.  However, the lining and the dress fabric pleated together at the waist made the skirt just puffy enough that it didn’t need a crinoline after all.  I’m pretty pleased about how it turned out.  Plus, it really is that magical, mythical creature, the bridesmaid dress you can wear again.  In fact, I already have, to work on Monday.  It was pretty sweet.

My house is full of flowers.  There’s the two buckets still half full of roses in the dining room, the huge cornucopia filled with mums and deep red calla lilies on the table, the long boxes half full of stems and leaves in random corners, the other buckets with bits of leftover greenery, and the plates of forgotten boutonnieres that keep turning up in odd locations.  Last night when I was heading out the door to swing club, I found a plate of them (we were storing them on paper plates inserted into ziplock bags) on the floor next to my speaker bag.  I think they were the ones that were supposed to go on the fathers of the bride and groom.  I grabbed them, and took them with me to swing dancing, where I gave one to Ms. K for being an amazing swing club president, and one to one of the guys in my class for pulling his shirt halfway over his face as a makeshift ninja mask while he crept around his follow after Mr. Zoot told them that they should be swing ninjas.  What Mr. Zoot meant was that they shouldn’t be clumping their feet along as if they were wearing iron boots, but the ninja mask was so awesome.  And then, when I just about doubled over laughing, he did it again!  I think that’s totally boutonniere worthy.

The reason why we have random boutonnieres all over the place is because we made about a million of them.  The Duchess had a whole choir of musicians, and lots of readers, plus ring bearers and others, all of whom she wanted to have flowers.  So we made a ton of them, with different designs specifically for the different types of people we were making them for.  And then, on the morning of the wedding, somehow most of them never made it down to the church.  I’m not sure what happened to a lot of them.  I haven’t found any more today.  But you never know.  They’re… lurking.

And now, hopefully, we are done with the Year of Weddings.  Frankly, after all the weddings, the holidays are looking a bit like a walk in the park.  (Famous last words…)  Which reminds me, wasn’t there some Christmas knitting I was supposed to be doing?

Pictures soon!

St. Josaphat of Polosk

It is very quiet in the house just now.  Rosie is still fast asleep in her bed.  I have no idea where Johnnycakes is (I often don’t), but if he’s here he’s likely fast asleep as well.  The load of laundry I started a bit ago is swishing and tumbling in the basement.  I’ve eaten my breakfast (leftover Chinese), and am about to get up and make my first cup of tea.  Or maybe coffee.  I haven’t decided.  Either way, it’s good to sit here in the chair by the window, with the sunshine streaming in, and the branches dancing in the breeze beneath the clear blue skies above.  In a little while, after the wash is done cycling and the supply of hot water is secure, I’ll go take my shower.  Today is Sweetness’ wedding day, so around noon most of the family (including The Duchess and 007 who drove in from Philadelphia last night) will be piling into The Jesus Van to head north to attend.  We all love Sweetness very much, so it’s a special joy for us to see this day come.

This past Wednesday night was swing dancing.  Wednesday night has meant swing dancing for me pretty much every night for the past six years, so this is nothing new.  However, what is new is how much fun it was.  You see, our local swing scene has been struggling for a while.  I won’t go into details, but basically a lot of the more experienced dancers have gotten very burnt out, a lot of the newer dancers haven’t stuck around, and it’s turned into the kind of situation where you end up spending way more time standing around talking to your friends than you do dancing.  I tried to fight this for a while, but I felt like I was the only one, and after a while even I got tired.  There was a lot going on in my life, sometimes my health was not good (it’s hard to be enthusiastic about dancing when you’re having trouble breathing), and well, whatever.  To make a long story short, we needed something to change.

Recently Dove decided that she was going to Do Something about this.  She decided to start with adjusting her own attitude.  The reason she comes to the Wednesday night dances, she decided, was to dance.  So she needed to get out there and make her dances happen.  This meant inviting everyone to dance, even the new guy who was going to forget to lead, the guy who never asked her to dance back, even the one guy who smells kinda funny.  We talked about this new attitude together, and I decided that I was willing to give it another try myself.  So last Wednesday we made it a competition.  We were going to dance with every single guy there, and the first girl to complete the set won.  And you know what, it was really fun!  I danced about three times as much as I usually do, I had a couple of good dances and no actively bad ones.  I even got a couple of the new girls sitting shyly on the sidelines to go ask some of the guys to dance too.  The energy Dove and I were putting into the dance seemed to spread, and before you knew it, even people who almost never dance were dancing.  (Long John, who never, never asks me to dance, actually asked me to dance.  I was a little stunned.)  It ended up being one of the most fun Wednesday nights I’ve had in a very long time.

The other part of Dove’s plan to revitalize Dayton swing dancing is to see if she can resurrect the monthly Saturday dances.  When I first started dancing we had big dances on the first Saturday of every month, but after a while attendance started to dwindle, and then about a year and a half ago (I don’t remember exactly when because by that time even I had stopped going) they were dropped.  However, Dove has been working hard on giving them another try.  We’re starting this December with what we’re calling Swing In The Snow on Saturday, December 3.  So far people are really responding, and it looks like it’s going to be a great time!  So if you’re not doing anything on December 3, why not come and join us?  No partner or dancing experience required, just come ready to have fun!

Want to help spread the word?

Download the full size flyer: Swing In The Snow Flyer

Four to a page for easy distribution: Swing In The Snow Flyer – quarter size

St. Lawrence

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

At long last, my dears, I have Sae’s official wedding pictures to show you!  And just so you know, all of these pictures are copyright Gail Fischer, Mr. T’s aunt, who generously gave them her services as a wedding photographer as her wedding present.  This is a picture of our whole family just after the wedding.

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

Here is Sae helping Fleur get ready.

(c) Gail Fischer

And me helping Sae get ready.

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

Fixing the veil.  Sae’s earrings and the bead flowers in her hair were hand made by Indy.

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

Isn’t she lovely?

(c) Gail Fischer photography

All the girls outside just before we walked down the aisle.  Note that Sae is not holding her bouquet.  This is because when we got into cars to come down to the church, we left the bouquet behind and 007 had to run back and get it.

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

 Mr. T and his best man waiting at the back of church.

(c) Gail Fischer photography

So happy!

(c) Gail Fischer photography

Before the altar.

You may kiss the bride!

(c) Gail Fischer photography

The Kiss of Peace with Fleur

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

And with me – Sae really likes this picture.  She thinks it shows off the veil nicely, and I should use it on my ravelry project page.

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

And then off to the reception!

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

Aren’t my parents cute?  They took ballroom dance classes together just so they could dance at Sae’s wedding.

(c) Gail Fischer Photography

And they lived happily ever after!

St. John the Baptist

This weekend Sae is officially moving into her husband’s home.  The two of them have been switching off between her apartment and his house since they got back from their honeymoon a few weeks ago, but now it’s time to clear her stuff out of the little townhouse she’s lived in for the last several years and officially change her address to his.  The two of them have already started the process of merging their households.  Lately Sae and Mr. T have been going around looking for homes for various excess items.  Rosie, Johnnycakes and I are getting Mr. T’s old washer and dryer (which is awesome, since ours have been on their last legs for, um, a while now), and a carpet for the dining room.  Sae tried to talk me into taking her old couch, but Rosie wasn’t interested in changing our living room furniture, particularly since we just got rid of our old, delapidated loveseat in favor of a lovely, new futon from Ikea (this also means that I can have friends come stay with me again – hint, The Young Queen, hint).

And then there’s all of Jacob’s stuff in the basement.  You see, Jacob and Sae had been roommates before he died.  Afterwards, everything got boxed up and put in Sae’s basement.  A few items were distributed (for example, I got his car), but for the most part people just didn’t want to deal with it.  Mom, Dad, and Mariah went down and did an inventory, which then got distributed to the family so that people could indicate which things they were interested in.  And then no one did anything about if for months.  It was just too hard.  I know that every time I tried to go through it, I’d get about a page and a half in before I started crying and had to close it again. 

However, after more than a year had gone by, The Duchess got impatient, and decided that we were going to finish this, like it or not.  Last year at family vacation she brought down lists, paper, her computer, and a printer, got the people who hadn’t finished going through the list to do so, and finally distributed the lists of who got what, and which items needed to be negotiated.  We spent a couple of days walking around with our individual sheafs of paper making deals with each other (“I’ll renounce my claim to the food processor if you let me have Jacob’s annotated Cicero.”)  And then we all went home and… did nothing.  Well, not all of us.  AP went down and fetched his stuff, but the rest of us just… didn’t.  There were lots of excuses.  Life was busy, gas was expensive, my car was having issues, and then I lost my copy of the inventory, and, well, yeah.  Mostly I just didn’t want to do it.  Even the prospect of increasing my Latin library by a factor of two or three wasn’t enough to lure me.  The fact that these were Jacob’s books that I was inheriting made it too hard.

And now it needs to be done.  On Saturday Sae moves, and that basement has to be emptied one way or another.  So tonight I’m biting the bullet.  Mariah, Rosie and I are driving down to Cincinnati together, where we’ll spend the evening trying to reconstruct our lists from the various notes people managed to save, and hopefully divvy up the stuff.  And then tomorrow we’ll move Sae into her new home.  And it will be good.

Also on the moving theme, on Sunday Rosie, Johnnycakes and I are having our Roommate Whole House Ultimate Cleaning Day, when we all work together to scrub down the entire house until it sparkles.  Rosie has proposed that as part of this cleaning day we move all our stuff out of the living room into the dining room so that she can get started on her summer renovation project.  Room by room, we’re redoing the house.  Last summer we got the dining room done (and it’s so pretty!), and now it’s the living room’s turn.  The room really needs a lot of work – plastering, painting, various other repairs.  Plus Rosie’s just a leetle bit of a perfectionist when it comes to plaster work.  So we’re looking forward to a summer of plaster dust and, hopefully, having a new, gorgeous living room come Fall.  I’ve gotten Rosie to agree that we’ll try to keep my sewing/work room as sealed off and accessible as possible, so hopefully I’ll be able to continue with my own work while she’s working on the living room.

It looks like it’s going to be a busy weekend, with lots of changes!  I’ll tell you how it went on Monday!