Crochet, knitting, astronomy & life in general.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Crafting for weddings (part 2)

I am Canadian, and therefore I talk a lot about the weather. This last week, winter has really decided to flex its muscles in Toronto with whopping lows of -20 C and lots of snow to go with it. Despite the fact that I grew up in Quebec, I've never really appreciated the cold. As I was walking down the snowy street towards the subway station, pining for the warmer weather, in the meandering way my mind works, I was reminded of all the weddings I went to this summer... and I realized I had never finished blogging about all the crafting I did for said weddings! Well then. That had to be rectified.

So here we are, in the middle of January, reminiscing about some cool stuff I made waaaaaaay back in August and September. You might recall my first post about wedding crafting, where I mentioned that I had something ready for an upcoming wedding, which, at the time, was coming up in a few days. Well, this was the wedding of a very dear friend of mine, in fact, the brother of the wife in the happy couple we saw get married last year. For him, the boyfriend purchased an epic drinking horn. He enjoyed it very much at the reception...


For his lovely wife, I decided to make something slightly more practical, and yet incredibly nerdy... A Tardis shawl! I know the both of them are huge Dr. Who fans (I remember him watching the entire series from the beginning back in undergrad), so I figured it would be appropriate. I used the Bigger on the Inside pattern by Kate Atherley, and I absolutely loved working it. The "time vortex lace" was a little boring after a while, but the Tardis pattern, even with the super long rows, was incredibly addictive.


It blocked out to about 6 feet wide, which was almost too big for my blocking mats and also 2 feet longer than it was supposed to be. Whoops! Oh well, it's a beautiful scarf anyway.


The yarn I used was Cascade Heritage Solids in a perfect Tardis blue colourway (actually, the colourway is called "Marine"). This yarn is also a joy to work with! It's great for socks (I'll get to that in a later post), it's soft, it's sturdy-feeling, and it also comes in a wide range of solid colours (pretty rare for a sock yarn). I'm a huge fan, and I'd definitely use this yarn again.


The final bit of wedding crafting I did let me return to my wedding-crafting roots... I made a pair of potholders. It was for the boyfriend's sister's wedding, and shortly after the wedding, they'd be moving to Switzerland together to start a new life there. I decided to crochet these, since it was a bit of a last-minute decision to make them, and since the boyfriend and I are a little obsessed with molluscs of late (you should check out the boyfriend's band), I decided on a snail theme.


I actually combined two patterns for this one. I used the Snails Chart by Stephanie Law for the main design and then this Bluebird Potholder pattern by Doni Speigle for the general design. It's double-sided, so super sturdy.


The yarn is a Lopi which a friend brought me back from a trip to Iceland. It's kind of scratchy, but works wonderfully for colourwork. I'm looking forward to making something neat with the rest of it.

No comments:

Post a Comment