sweetgeorgia

Once More, With Feeling

Time to sing along! Once more, with feeling. Again! It’s been over six years since I got to go to the Buffy singalong… but I’m going again, this coming Saturday!

If you are in Vancouver and are still in love with the Buffy musical, get your tix now! I’m not entirely sure if this is hosted by the Vancouver Firefly/Serenity Meetup Group, but it’s at the Pacific Cinematheque again and there’s a Facebook page for it here…

There’s a secret warm-up episode and door prizes… and they’re going to host a “Snoopy Dance” dance-off too. It’s the 10-year anniversary of this special musical episode of Buffy, so come on down and get your Whedon on. I imagine there might be just a few Jayne hats in the house.

The Rule of Four

Last year, the holidays were a veritable freak show for me. I was crazy and stressed and in turn, it made the people around me crazy and stressed too. So I vowed, post-turkey binge, that I would start getting organized for the holidays earlier this year. And in June, as I was scouring the internet for wedding planning info, I stumbled on this “Organized Christmas” site and bookmarked it for now**. They’ve just started to ping me about getting started, and I found this interesting article about what they call the “Crafter’s Rule of Four“.

The concept is simple. Look at your pile of unfinished objects… if there are more than four of them or if any one of them is more than four years old, don’t start a new project.

This is crazy hard for me because I am helpless around the thought of starting something new. Casting on with new yarn is so… enticing. It’s an addiction that I know I’ve written about before, but I can’t help it. Second Sock Syndrome? I got it. In spades. Do I have more than four projects in the works? Of course. Try fourteen, at least.

The article has a few good suggestions, like “batching” your handmade gifts around a theme. Want to knit scarves or hats for the holidays? Knit multiples and then you can more economically use up your yarn. Plus, I imagine you get faster at knitting the same pattern over and over. And of course, there is always the suggestion of setting aside dedicated time for it. But I find that challenging too because I also want to set aside dedicated time to practicing my guitar, snowboarding, playing WoW and catching up on life at Downton Abbey. In the end, I do a bit of this and a bit of that and end up with no time and fourteen half-knit objects.

So how do you do it? Are any of you planning on knitting gifts for the holidays? How do you do it without making yourself insane? I’m so envious of knitters who start and finish everything and who don’t stash. Sometimes I wish that were me. But I’m bewitched by “fresh” yarn. Heh. I guess that’s why I have a yarn company. But really, how do you “do” the holidays? How do you finish everything (be it gift knitting/baking/cooking/cleaning/buying/wrapping/whatever) in time and still have time to enjoy and savour the holidays?

** I promise not to turn into Mary Turlington. If you haven’t met Mrs. Turlington from Christmas with the Vinyl Cafe, you must.

Wedding, Captured

Thank you so much to all of you for your lovely and sweet comments on the wedding shawl and all your good wishes for the wedding. The little messages fluttered into my inbox in the last few days before the wedding and kept us positive, even as the weather looked threateningly ominous.

It’s true, it poured rain on the day of our outdoor wedding (which I’ve been told is good luck!) but the rain lifted at the exact time of our vows. The mist and fog in the mountains and trees at Capilano Lake, plus so many of our beloved family and friends there, complete with colorful umbrellas… it was truly magical. Nothing, not even the rain, could have dampened my mood that day.

Our photographers, Jeff and Cat, were undeniably essential in our planning process. I’ve known Jeff since high school (he’s the baby brother of one of my high school friends) and we were so happy that we could work with him for our wedding. Jeff and Cat helped us with everything from working out the minute-by-minute timeline of the day to honeymoon planning, and led us through all the photo sessions with clear direction. We had a chance to meet with them a couple weeks ago (in their very swank studio) to see our wedding photos and I finally got a moment to assemble a few here.

Finch’s at Homer and Pender is a sentimental spot for Dan and I and we were so excited to introduce the café to our friends. The staff at the café were so accommodating and even saved “our” spot in the window for our photos. We had their wonderful baguette sandwiches for lunch on the way to North Vancouver and the cafe served as a cozy shelter from the pouring rain.

For our table decorations, we typeset all our favourite song lyrics and set them in picture frames. This simple-looking idea ended up being how I spent 7 hours staining and sanding thirty-six $0.83 pine picture frames in the last week before the wedding.

The wedding cake was lemon cake and raspberry filling, covered in fondant and decorated with ribbons and fresh petals. It was breathtaking and I’m so happy we asked Roma to help make this cake for us. Roma is also the baby sister of one of Dan’s groomsmen and we were blessed that she could lend her talents here.

It was such a blessing to be surrounded by our dearest friends and family on our wedding day. So much love and friendship that we are really grateful for. From the team who setting up the ceremony site to the group who hung paper lanterns and laid out the reception decorations at Grouse, we were unbelievably lucky to have help in putting together the wedding. The weather made for some challenges, but our friends really helped make the day come to life. At the end of the day, I just hope that our guests, friends and family were well-fed, danced-out, and slightly intoxicated on a feeling of love and happiness that we couldn’t help but share.

vendors:
photographers: Jeff Chang Photographers // getting ready location: Westin Wall Centre, Vancouver Aiport // ceremony venue: Capilano Lake, North Vancouver // reception venue: Lupins Café at the peak of Grouse Mountain // cake: Roma Sihota, Cakes by Roma // officiant: Pastor Kenneth Pierce, Tenth Church // flowers: Teresa Juan, Light Couture International // dress: Alfred Sung at Bryan’s Bride // DJ: Jeff Carlson, X-treme Custom Sound // hair: Melissa Taylor, Bangtown Saloon // makeup: Heather Yau

Giving Voice to your Interest

It’s funny that when I get really stressed or start feeling the burden of the quantity of work that I have to complete, I seek escape… and not escape as in watching Glee or playing WoW. It’s not potent enough. I don’t even consider knitting or spinning much of an escape, either, since I end up thinking too much about what I’m doing. Even now, I’m trying to pick a cardigan pattern to knit up and it’s downright anxiety-generating. But I mean escape into something that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. Doing something just for the sake of doing something. Not in any way ever expecting to somehow be “productive” about it. Just doing something because it’s fun…

So, about two months ago, I rented a guitar, sort of out of the blue (ok, it was after I saw Sam Roberts play live recently), and started to learn to play. The guitar I happened to rent was a Taylor 114ce which is an acoustic guitar in Taylor’s Grand Auditorium shape (it has a slimmer waist) with a cutaway (“c”) and electronics (“e”). I played it for about a month and decided to buy one — but the 312ce model, which is their Grand Concert shape (slimmer waist and smaller “bout”) to fit my small arms a bit better. It’s still got the cutaway and the electronics (in case it ever needs to be amplified), and it’s all built out of solid wood. But my guitar is on backorder right now as Taylor is still making it. In the meantime, I’m borrowing a friend’s big dreadnought-shaped guitar and still playing away happily. It’s the perfect feeling to be able to play in the evenings after work and let my brain sort of melt.

It’s so interesting to me to observe in myself what I’m like at the beginning of a love affair with a new hobby. How rabid I can be in searching for information. How obsessed I can become with understanding the difference between different kinds of strings, tone woods, and even picks. How I can easily lose an hour playing the same four bars over and over again. I even feel motivated to somehow blog or record my thoughts about it.

Funny, how I can’t find time to collect my thoughts for this blog, but I can easily spend that time playing the guitar. I think that’s all because I get so caught up in “presenting” on this blog rather than simply documenting and expressing. Relaying and remembering. It’s all very ironic, since I’ve been asked to participate on a discussion panel at Northern Voice this coming Saturday, May 8th, specifically about how blogging and this whole social media/Ravelry world have changed how I craft. I think a lot of us knit-type bloggers have gone through a phase where we feel like we are only knitting so that we have things to show on our blogs. Where, we feel insecure or inadequate if we don’t constantly have finished objects to show. And then when you create these obstacles for yourself, you mute your own voice. You stop being able to share your thoughts about this thing that you love.

Come have a listen this weekend. Northern Voice is a local conference about personal blogging and social media and I’m intrigued by some of the other sessions like “Overcoming Social Anxiety” and “How to screw up your own personal blog” (hmm, this may be insight into my own psychosis). In our session, Fibre Arts Online it’ll be Kim Werker (of the all new MightyUgly.com — very very cool concept), Mandy Moore (of Yarnbombing and Knitty fame), and me… talking about how blogging about what we love changed our lives… for better or for worse.

Handmade Nation!

A couple months ago, I found myself quite challenged and provoked by a documentary about the intersection between creativity and responsibility. It is truly liberating and enlightening to have someone describe and defend creative work in any genre. And so, I’m really looking forward to attending the Vancouver premier screening of Handmade Nation this Thursday, July 9th.

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